


Cascade

by Draikinator



Category: Transformers: Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 21:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2402870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draikinator/pseuds/Draikinator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cross-posted: A sort of semi-linear, spiralling collection of thoughts and memories, some before the war, some during, some after the restoration of cybertron. Soundwave waits in the shadowzone, Rafael refuses to go home, Knockout adjusts to life as an autobot, Ratchet grieves over Optimus, and more. Spoilers for basically everything, GREAT liberties taken with backstories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What you're about to read is fairly linear, but not totally. Different chapters focus on a different character. For example, this chapter is about Soundwave. Later chapters include Knockout, Bulkhead, Ratchet, and Arcee. And more! Things happen. The story goes in and out between pre-war, mid-war, and post-predacons rising. There are serious liberties taken with character backstories- especially with characters who got very little characterization or backstory. References to some other Transformers media, modified to fit into tfp canon. Also apologies in advance for spelling and grammatical errors- no matter how many times I reread and edit a document I always seem to miss things!
> 
> Warnings for: Torture, violence, robot gore, child neglect/abuse, major character death, secondary character death, grieving, war.
> 
> I would like to thank you in advance for reading! I mostly write in my spare time for fun, so I love to hear what you think about my stories! I'm very delicate, though, please be gentle when commenting. Thank you, and please enjoy!

 

**Finish Him**

The crowd roared, totally over the edge with excitement, their voices sending tremors through Soundwave's metal body. His left arm was twisted into ruin, bright blue energon pouring from a dozen or more breaches, torn cabling sparking and bent bolts and wires tinkling down through the hardware, no longer attached. He exvented heavily, staring down at the far more injured mech at his feet with the silent disdain that had made him famous.

"No- I yield, I yield-" the mech stuttered, his glitching vocal processors stumbling over the words and sending the pitches and tones to wildly inappropriate levels, bursts of static choking the syllables. But Soundwave understood him.

He was missing both his legs, crushed and mangled pedes strewn in pieces around the arena, a massive energon puddle pooling around his neatly crushed waist. Soundwave took a step forward as the mech raised what remained of it's functioning arm in a desperate plea for survival as the crowd chanted " _Finish him, finish him, finish him_ " so loudly it sent another wave of lost pieces shuddering out of Soundwave's crushed limb and down to the metal floor of the arena.

"You don't have to kill me-" The mech continued pleading, one optic blinking out, "You could just hit me again, and I can offline temporarily- and I'll crawl out of the pile later- I won't tell anyone, I promise- I'll get a new name and I'll leave Kaon, I'll never come back, I promise-"

Soundwave clicked on his visor's screen, playing back the crowds's words, " _Finish him, finish him, finish him!_ "

The mech scrabbled against the steel ground as Soundwave raised his remaining limb, clearing the intrusive alerts and demands for repairs blooming against his HUD.

"They'll never know, I promise, you won't-" Soundwave neatly removed his opponent's head with a clean tug, holding the rest of his body down with his chest cables. The crowd roared even louder, something Soundwave had not even realized was possible.

He dropped the mech's helm with a clatter beside him, then turned to face the crowd.

At the end of a match, his energon boiling with hate and rage against his position and the things he had to do to survive, the things these vermin would pay him to do made him glad he did not have a typical faceplate.

The masses never liked a champion that hated them.

* * *

Soundwave skittered to a halt, HUD bursting with alerts and alarms, the crack down the middle of it making it more difficult to focus on the images behind them than he was finding himself able to become accustomed to.  _Left Arm Damaged: 60%, Right Arm Damaged: 84%, Left Leg Damaged: 52%, Right Leg Damaged: 12%, Helm Damaged: 24%, Main Energon Line: Severed, Auxillary Lines: Severed, Tertiary Lines: Severed-_

He cleared them all. They were irrelevant now.

Megatronus stood above him, wielding a gaudy silver blade that Soundwave hadn't taken seriously. A decision he suspected he would not have sufficient time to properly regret.

The crowd was chanting in unison.  _Rise, Rise, Rise_ , they called, and briefly Soundwave thought they meant him, until a memory file blossomed on his screen of Megatronus- the original Megatronus, of the thirteenth, the Fallen. Rise, they said. For Megatronus, the Fallen, to rise, and bring them with him.

He hated them.

In fact the only living thing in this arena he didn't hate at the moment was Megatronus. He hated the way energon was piddling beneath him, pathetically, beyond his control and beyond the ability of his self repair to stop. He hated the crowds and their weakness and their desires and he hated mostly what he had been driven to, and what he had become. He hated his own weakness, he hated his despair and he hated his hate.

He did not hate Megatronus.

Not Megatronus, who was desperately fighting for his own survival, the way he had been up until this final moment. Not Megatronus, the ex-miner who had risen to fame and glory and status through his desperation and starvation and hate, the same way Soundwave had.

He did not hate Megatronus for being better at hating than he was.

His visor flickered, the lights beneath his plating following suit as his energon levels dropped to critical and imminent offline messages popped open against his screen. He bowed his head, playing back a soundbite from the crowd's cheering.

" _Finish him, finish him, finish him._ "

Megatronus paused, blade held high in his one remaining arm, chest plating sparkling in the reflective dull glow of the energon pouring from the gash in his shoulder that had severed his main fuel line. Soundwave had not been lucky to get that shot in, but he had been unlucky to lose his footing against the slick surface of the energon covered metal ground, and in doing so, the match, as well.

"You were- a worthy opponent," Megatronus offered, vocal processors stuttering over the gash in them, and Soundwave looked up, meeting his eyes.

There was silence as they stared at eachother, both halfway to going offline as it was, Megatronus wavering in his ability to stand, Soundwave unable to even move his battered parts but to give him a small nod of acknowledgement and gladiatorial gratitude.

This was how all gladiators died. A few months of middle caste living, energon to drink and steady repairs in exchange for a short life and the entertainment of the masses. Megatronus having been born a miner was a death sentence for them both.

Megatrones shuttered his optics, before reopening them with a snarl.

"You were a worthy opponent," he said again, disdain familiar to Soundwave echoing in his voice, "and they would have me end you far before your time." Megatronus stumbled uncertainly, then collapsed forward, ramming the blade of his sword into the ground and leaning on the hilt as he exvented heavily. Soundwave could hear the liquid in his vents moving with a distinct sloshing sound, clogging Megatronus' filters.

"I suspect you hate them as much as I do," he said quietly, and Soundwave nodded again, his HUD starting to dim, "How about we stick it to this slagged up, broken system, together, huh?" He coughed, then leaned up off his weapon haphazardly, kicking it over. The blade snapped like a toothpick beneath his formidable weight and he staggered backward, before raising up one hand and staring the announcer dead in the eye.

"I yield," Megatronus spat, before falling backwards with a crash in a heap.

The crowd went silent, but the medics flooded the field anyway.

* * *

"Autobots don't  _enjoy_  killing," The gray bot in front of him spat, and Soundwave felt his energon boil, "We're not  _murderers_  like you ' _Cons_."

He stepped away from the shattered remains of what had once been his companion, Ravage, now an empty metal husk covered in spilled energon and smoking still from the burning wounds it had suffered.

His midsection cables dropped with a quiet click.

Autobots didn't  _enjoy_  killing, but they certainly  _enjoyed_  rubbing the privilege to have mercy in their opponents faceplates. Soundwave felt his gears snap, an almost snarling noise he had forgotten he could make without his voicebox, his servos clenching into fists as his pedes revved with fury.

Autobots were the single most selfish creatures ever birthed by the Well of All Sparks. Their obsession with 'justice' now that the lower caste had risen up and demanded it was the cruelest irony he had ever encountered. After millenia of watching laborers offline in the streets, to tired and battered to afford energon or repairs while privileged Autobots walked unhampered twenty floors above them on the surface he no longer had any sympathies for their claims that they were 'righteous.'

The righteous cause was not the one who would have let them starve while they played politics and talked everything out like sparklings. The righteous ones were those who had run screaming through the streets to take what they deserved. The righteous ones were those who took what was  _owed_  them and was  _owed_  the the millions before who had died because of this insanity. The righteous ones were those who refused to go quietly into the night.

The righteous ones were the Decepticons.

He sustained minimal damage in dismantling his opponent.

* * *

He plucked the axe from the tiny native's hands with the ease one might pluck a petal from a flower. Their screams echoed down the halls and reverberated in his systems, a gentle reminder of millennia past. " _Finish him, finish him, finish them,_ " chanted in his spark, silent to all but him.

He retracted his cables and punctured the line leading from the main computer bank. They had been neutralized. He dropped the axe and left them unfinished.

* * *

The Autobot rogue has more than earned his own death. The destruction he had caused against Lord Megatron's cause could not be ignored or forgiven.

The resonance blaster glowed dull and red in his servo as he raised it to point at the helm of the swordsbot. There was no time for regrets, there was no room for excuses.

With the end of the war he had thought the killing had been over. He had thought the Decepticon cause could simply move on to the righteous rule it had been promised. Lord Megatron would get the glory he had deserved, the high caste life that had been denied him by birth. Soundwave would be by his side, faithful servant through the millennia, uniting the fallen Cybertron back to its once former glory, only without the slavery and pit fights and starvation. A Cybertron worth living in.

The dull glow rose brighter, and the autobot at his feet shut his eyes, preparing for the inevitable end. A memory file exploded onto his HUD display, only for a moment, a moment of agony and blossoming damage alerts and Megatronus standing above him with the same look he was certain he would have right this moment if he had a face.

He had been a worthy opponent.

Had been. Had been.  _HAD_  been.

He gripped the blaster tightly. Had been.  _Had been. HAD BEEN. HAD BEEN._

Lazerbeak sent him a wave of alarmed pings along with her coordinates.

Had been. Had been. He disengaged his weapon and dropped his arm. Would be again.

He transformed after a quick step away, prioritizing his only remaining minibot's life over the Autobot's death. No one could begrudge him the logic of the decision. No one would.

* * *

_Power Levels Critical: 5% Remaining. Shut Down Imminant. Recharge Required._

Soundwave cleared the alerts from his HUD display silently. There was laughter around him, resonating off the walls.

"Wait, so these protocols are routed  _directly_  through the system input?" The smallest human giggled, standing on the main databank beside the traitorous medic, another life Soundwave had spared, many times, apparently when he should not have.

"Of course they are," scoffed Knockout in that obnoxious, throaty way he always had, "Where else would they route through?"

"Uh, duh, reroute them through the analog systems. The way this is set up, it's a miracle you haven't had a critical surge. There's way too much going through direct right now. I mean, how would you even  _shut down_  nonessential systems in a power emergency?" The little human said, tapping obnoxiously slowly at the keys that were half his height. Soundwave grimaced internally. He had scripted those protocols himself.

He was starting to hate the little human more than any of Cybertronians.

_Power Levels Critical: 4% Remaining. Shut Down Imminent. Recharge Required._

Soundwave did not move from his stationary seat against the far wall of the Nemesis' groundbridge room, not bothering to waste precious remaining energy on useless activity.

He had exhausted all options, but no longer possessing the power to open another ground bridge and having hacked into the Autobot's logs and found this particular issue was one he could have solved far too late to actually solve it, there was little else to do but wait to for his energon levels to run out and to offline quietly.

Knockout was being unusually hostile considering he had not actually scripted the Nemesis energy routing protocols, but it seemed mostly facetious. Soundwave wondered briefly if Knockout was actually enjoying the tiny human's company. Maybe he was just happy to have another scientist around who wasn't ordering him around for once.

"Oh- wait, where is this route going?" The human said, it's voice small in the echoes of the room.

Knockout looked up from where he had been typing, and raised an eyebrow, "Hm. That looks like Soundwave's direct uplink route. He uploads- uploaded data wirelessly sometimes. He basically  _was_  the Nemesis," Knockout said, returning to his work, and Soundwave peeked up.

_Power Levels Critical: 3% Remaining. Shut Down Imminent. Recharge Required._

He exvented slowly, abating the rising desperation, and a quiet feeling he hadn't encountered since the begginings of the Great War- fear.

"But, that doesn't make sense. It says here he uplinked four days ago. We shot him into the Shadowzone almost a month ago."

Knockout put aside the cablings he'd been repairing, and rose to inspect the databanks the human had pulled up more closely.

"Huh... It looks like he actually has. Maybe he got out?" Knockout suggested hesitantly, and Soundwave noted with satisfaction the concern in his voice. He should be afraid of him. If he  _had_  gotten out of here, the traitor would be dead by now.

"...Or maybe he's still online," The human said, almost to himself. Soundwave focused his optics on him, "When we were in the Shadowzone, we managed to get information back to this dimension using Miko's cell. Maybe the Nemesis' wireless connection worked for Soundwave, too."

Soundwave would have smiled if he could have.

_Power Levels Critical: 2% Remaining. Shut Down Imminent. Recharge Required._

Nevermind.

The human tapped quickly at the logbanks, accessing his previous activity in the system. He'd discovered very quickly that it drained his power immensely, and there was little he could do but send messages. And he had tried to. To Shockwave, to Starscream, to Knockout- all ignored. To Megatron... returned, unsent.

The war was over. The war had ended a long time ago, and he had kept on fighting. The way you kept fighting in the Pits long after it was obvious who the victor was, stamping out any traces of life, screaming into the crowd your right to life, your right to existence by ripping someone else's from them.

He didn't have enough power left to compose much of a message, but if he was going to offline anyway, the least he could do was offline knowing he had perturbed the Autobot's favourite human pet.

He composed a one word message, and pushed it through the connection, sapping his remaining energy reserves. His HUD display lit up red and desperate, and he eyed Lazerbeak with friendly contemplation where she lay, offline, a few yards away, sapped of all power.

_Power Levels Critical: 0% Remaining. Immediate Shutdown Protocol Activated. Automatic Recharge Protocols Activated. Energon Levels Depleted. Offline Imminent._

He exvented slowly, feeling his processor shut down. His legs went first, though he'd shut down the main energon lines to them weeks ago. Then his arms, as the dull purple glow of his energon lines ebbed slowly into darkness.

He would have smiled if he could as his message blossomed on the Nemesis' databank screen in front of the human and the traitor, glitched and unrendered as it was.

 _Murderer_ , it said, simply, an elegant way to convey everything he wanted to. A fitting final word- an accusation, laced with secondary meaning, but mainly, resonating with truth- one of the hallmarks of a true Decepticon. So many lies that the few truths ring out clear and aching with the sharpness of them.

One of them said his name uncertainly, but he wasn't able to register which it had been before total system shutdown.


	2. Family

Family

"When you strike human flesh with too much force, it can crush the muscles and tissue beneath without actually cutting the skin. When that happens, there's a lot of unoxygenated blood under the surface with nowhere to go, so it makes a big blue-black spot there. We call it a bruise."

"Okay, wait, let me process that. Are you saying something hit you?" Bumblebee buzzed, and his eyebrows furrowed downward, catching the light as they did so, before his engine roared and he looked back up suddenly, doorwings jerking downward tensely, "A Con?"

"No, no!" Raf yelled, waving his hands in front of him quickly, alarmed, "No, not a Decepticon. Just a kid at school."

Bee's doorwings shifted back to their original position, but he didn't look comforted, "Why'd he do that? You're both human, aren't you?"

"Yeah, well, you and the Cons are both Cybertronian…" Raf muttered, to which Bee frowned, and he added quickly, "Young humans aren't always the best example of our species. You get a lot of bullies. Especially when you skip four grades like I did."

Bee's wings buzzed in frustration, "I don't like it. Without your help this planet would be a husk like Cybertron by now. They owe you a little respect."

Raf laughed, before wincing as he brought up a hand to touch the large purple splotch on his left eye gingerly, "Yeah, well, they don't know that Bee. And they probably never will."

Bee shrugged with a light rev of his engine, "Maybe." After a long pause, he looked back over at his tiny friend, who'd resumed typing on his laptop. "What did your folks say?" He beeped.

Rafael froze.

After a moment, his fingers resumed typing, but with less fervor than before, "They said I shouldn't get caught up in stuff like that and should just focus on studying," he said quietly.

"That doesn't seem like the way human parents are supposed to work, from what you've told me."

"It isn't," Raf said, without looking up.

* * *

 

"Rafael, are your parents not home?" June asked, concern in her voice. Rafael looked at the driveway, then up and down the street before reaching down to his feet and zipping up his backpack, before hefting it onto one shoulder.

"No, it doesn't look like it," he said, flipping the door lock up and pushing the door open.

"Wait, Raf!" June said, grabbing his shoulder and leaning forward, "Are you sure it's okay? Do your parents let you stay home alone, at your age?"

Raf shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the topic, "It's okay, Ms. Darby, I have a key," He said, before dropping his shoulder from her touch and sliding out of the passenger seat. He shut the door gently and she watched as he made his way to the door and opened it, stepping into the dark household.

She waited until she saw the foyer light turn on before she drove away.

* * *

 

"All clear."

Bee transformed with a sigh, stretching his tired hydraulics with relief. Rafael leaned back against the tall noise barrier they were using as cover with a sigh. They didn't have time for a lot of breaks, and already he was taking advantage of a local wireless connection to run a scan that Bee didn't understand. It took the Autobot a moment before he beeped urgently, startled by his companion's careless action.

"Raf! What part of no contact didn't you understand?" He buzzed nervously, servos twitching anxiously.

Rafael looked up from his laptop screen with a lopsided grin, "Come on, Bee, really? Have a little faith in me. I'm running on so many proxies and encryptions right now I'd be surprised if even Soundwave could trace me."

Bee wasn't very well versed in computers and didn't know how to dispute this.

"Who are you contacting?" He hazarded, already preparing for a getaway.

"No one," Rafael said absently, distracted, "I'm running a search through the usual databases trying to find the others. And deleting the info. Just because we don't have a base anymore doesn't mean I get a free pass on security sweeps."

Bee nodded, then went back to stretching tired gears locked up from too much driving, still tensely monitoring his proximity sensors.

"Not even tempted to email your folks?" He said, peeking over one arm at his tiny friend.

"Not even a little bit," Rafael smiled, without looking up as he continued typing. Something about the way he said it made Bee uncomfortable, but he wasn't quite sure why.

* * *

 

He typed rapidly- the input coordinates for the groundbridge were constantly fluctuating, inside of an orbiting object in space, it was a race between space time and Rafael's hands to keep it steady and viable.

The concept of consciously trapping someone in the shadowzone was unthinkable, but Jack had thought of it. And if it was a choice between one bot lost in a dimensional rift and the all of Cybertron, the right decision was obvious.

So why did he feel so guilty?

* * *

"Ratchet?"

The medic looked up from his calculations. It was late, and the base was darker than normal. It took him a moment to locate the smallest human who was living in their base standing on the railing behind the computer banks.

"Rafael? What are you doing up?"

"Can I talk to you?" He said, looking down as he leaned against the guard.

"Yes, well, I'm doing some calculations with some of the information Optimus sent me about the reformed atmosphere on Cybertron," He looked down at Raf, who'd slumped down against the guardrail, turned away from him, "But yes, go on."

"My parents think I'm dead," He said, after a moment. Ratchet scoffed.

"I'm sure Fowler let them know you were in custody."

"No," he said, "I hacked into my mom's email. They had a service two weeks ago."

Ratchet stopped typing and stared at him, unsure of what to say as Rafael continued, "I guess Agent Fowler forgot to tell them, or they were all so busy with the Decepticons it wasn't a priority, or... I dunno. No one told them. All they knew when they evac'd Jasper was that they couldn't find me. I guess they figured I got caught in the explosion. Or the meteor shower, or whatever the government told them it was."

"Rafael, I'm sure..."

"Agent Fowler is taking me back to them tomorrow, now that's it's safe. I dunno how happy they'll be to see me. I wonder if they'll think I'm a ghost?" He said, the last part very quietly.

Ratchet still wasn't sure what to say.

"Raf, what did you do?" Ratchet intoned, gruff voice frustrated in a way he had not been in a long time.

Raf didn't look away from his computer.

"Rafael, what did you do?" He said again, this time closing his laptop with a single robotic digit. Raf looked up, face red.

"I hacked into Agent Fowler's email and told my parent's they found my remains. He can't make me go back now."

"Rafael!" Ratchet yelled, louder than he should have, "You have to go back to your family!"

"No I don't!" Raf yelled, jumping to his feet and toppling his laptop onto the floor, "You can't make me go back there!"

"What are you going to do when they want to see the body?!"

"I told them there was too much radiation and it had to be destroyed!"

Ratchet scoffed again, "Why on earth do you not want to go back to your family!?"

"They're not my family!" Raf burst, eyes brimming with hot tears. Ratchet's mouth settled into a line, brows furrowing in confusion, "Remember when I said you don't have to be related to someone to be family? Just because you're related doesn't make you family."

He sank back down to his seat, and picked up his laptop, inspecting it carefully.

"Raf, I-"

"The Autobots are my family," he whispered quietly, almost to himself as he booted the computer back up, inspecting it for damage, "and no one can make me go back to those people."

Ratchet nodded silently.

* * *

 

"Ratchet, I-"

Rafael's quiet attempt at comfort was drowned out by the medic's hacking sobs. he had laid himself over the computer bank, and Rafael could see the log bank open, a half finished entry detailing Optimus' death and the Allspark's revival on screen.

Rafael toed the floor, before climbing up the railing to get on level with the computer banks, before carefully swinging down to them, and, balancing on the smooth, uneven surface, made his way closer to Ratchet.

"Ratchet?" Finally, noticing his proximity, the Autobot looked up, optics going in and out of focus in surprise, "I'm sorry."

Ratchet just buried his head again, but muffled his crying.

Raf touched one of Ratchet's servos gently, before pulling back and moving toward the guard railing to pull himself up, "I'll call my parents and have Agent Fowler airlift me back to Nevada. You should be back on Cybertron, with your family," he said quietly as he swung a leg up over the platform.

"No!" Ratchet cried, head jerking out of his elbow.

Startled, Rafael dropped back down to the keyboard and looked at him.

"No, no... I..." His eyes darted from Rafael to the image he'd recorded of Optimus before he left on the screen, "I have already lost Optimus. I cannot... I cannot lose you too. You were right, Rafael. You are family."

Raf was not sure how to react to such a brutal display of emotion, one he had never seen Ratchet exhibit before. He swallowed heavily, and nodded.

* * *

 

Rafael's fingers twitched uncertainly, hovering over the console he was hardly equipped to use. The screen blossomed like a dying flower, a single word typed out on the screen, the recipient simply labelled Soundwave.

Murderer.

"Soundwave?" Rafael said, disbelieving and quiet.

Knockout coughed awkwardly beside him, but Raf didn't respond. He was to busy staring, eyes locked onto the eight letters on his screen, unable to tear his eyes away.

"In your own defense, he was kind of a stick in the mud," Knockout said, reaching across the console to delete the message. Raf jumped up and grabbed Knockout's servo.

"No!" He cried, and Knockout drew back, startled.

"What?"

"We..." Raf paused, "We can't leave him in there."

"Look, it's a miracle he's stayed online this long," Knockout grumbled, "And you really don't want Soundwave out here. I've never seen anyone come as close to killing Megatron as him." Raf sideeyed him, confused. "I was a medic in Kaon," He said dismissively, "Actually, I was a low class engineer, but I always had an aptitude for science and one thing led to another, and-" He paused with a cough, "And, well, and I started spending time around the pits and picked up some things. Never got into a high class medical school like Ratchet but, I did get to watch the Arena fights."

Raf sat back against the keypad, lost in thought.

"I don't think we can leave him there. That's just... not the autobot way," Raf said with a sigh.

Knockout laughed, actually laughed, "I don't believe you ever saw what the autobo-" he stopped, then continued with less humor, "The Autobots were like during the war. Neither side had a reputation for mercy."

Raf looked up, decisive, "Well, we've earned that reputation now. We let you join up," Knockout shifted feet uncomfortably with a shrug, obviously not wanting to press the issue of his loyalty any further, "And I think we need to mount a rescue mission. How long do you think he can last?"

"Well, if his systems sent him into stasis lock, like they should have, all we need is enough energon to refuel him and we should probably be able to reboot him," Knockout said, obviously not thrilled by the notion.

Rafael tightened his hands at his sides.

"Weren't you on his side a few months ago?" He said, distaste obvious in his voice.

"Well, yeah, but, I'm on your side, now," Knockout said nervously. Rafael snorted indignantly.

"Family really is a human concept," He sighed, and pulled his sleeve up over his wrist comm, "Ratchet! I need a groundbridge. We need to talk."

"Bee can't go, he'll try extra hard to knock him offline for killing Megatron. Do you think he knows that Megatron got... un...killed?" Raf said uncertainly, and Ratchet tapped his servos against the computer banks back at base.

"Probably not. I don't remember having mentioned it in that room."

"Me neither. Arcee probably isn't a good choice either. Bulkhead?"

"And Wheeljack. And Arcee. If we do this," Ratchet added, hesitantly, and Raf shot him a look.

"Ratchet, we have to. We can't leave him there to rust. We can wait a few weeks and make sure he's in stasis and then secure him before we boot him back up."

Ratchet didn't look convinced.

"If we don't, he'll never join the All Spark," Raf added quietly, and Ratchet's twitching servos froze, along with the rest of him.

"What?"

Raf bit his lip, "Ratchet... Optimus would have never let us abandon someone out there- not like this. Not alive."

Ratchet remained silent, then activated the comm to call Wheeljack.


	3. In, and Out

**In, and Out**

"You need to touch up your paintjob."

"What? You must be joking- it's only a scratch!"

The older mech slammed his servos against the table, and Knockout winced at the sound as it echoed off the walls.  
"What did I tell you?" He yelled, "Do you wanna be stuck one block over Kaon for the rest of your life?

Knockout shook his head, shrinking back uncertainly, "No, I don't- I just- paint is expensive, and buffing takes so long, it just doesn't seem productive to do this EVERY DAY and-"

The older mech exvented heavily.

"Knockout, one of these days you'll actually believe me, but I'm gonna need you to start acting like you do, today, or this apprenticeship is over."  
Knockout's eyes widened, "What? No! I can't go back out there! I'm not built to do anything else!"

"It's the low caste scrappers that care about efficiency and how well something works," the older mech sighed, leaning back off the table, "the upper caste only cares how good it looks. If you want to be an engineer, you need to present yourself like one. If you don't look like you can even keep yourself in top shape, no one with any money will ever pay you to make anything. Now just go," he looked down at Knockout with a grimace, who was rattling in his shell, "just go clean yourself up. We have a meeting with the high secretary in two hours."

* * *

Knockout just focused on ventilations. In, and out. In, and out.

The mech on the table gave a shuddering cry as his own vents turned on with a clicking whirr that made it obvious they needed repairs. Knockout ran his fingers over his helm, focusing on his ventilating. In, and out. In, and out. Sure, a proper medic would already have all the data packets downloaded to let them know exactly what that clicking noise meant and how to repair it, but Knockout was not a medic class Cybertronian, had never been a medic class Cybertronian, and was relying on the second hand data packets he had had to collect via black market sales in lower Kaon and whatever the other, actually trained medics would trade him for spare parts.

He did not know how to fix the vents.

He did, however, know how to to repair the gash on the gladiator's back,  _over_  his vents, which was a good a start as any. All he had to do was weld the plating back down. After that, he would try replacing the fan, and if that didn't work, he'd check the wiring, and if that didn't work, then he'd rummage through the pile outside the arena for a functional ventilation system and just replace the whole slagging thing.

He was not the best medic. But this was not what he had been made to do. It was what he had learned to do, on his own, and the pay was better, the esteem was better, and he no longer found himself grovelling at the feet of upper class mechs who lived on the surface and never had to walk toe to toe with the vermin of lower Kaon.

He had never liked grovelling, but he liked the idea of going offline early far less, and Knockout stubbornly refused to allow the world break him down. He fully intended to hone his medical skills in the pits as far as they could go and use his meager savings to buy his way up to the surface, where he could hopefully be reformatted into a proper medical unit- and never have to step foot in lower Kaon again.

But first, the vents.

* * *

"Do you have any idea how many energon cubes you just scored me?" Knockout chimed, as he pulled the plating off of the mech's arm, "Ooh, yeah, can't salvage this, we'll need to replace it."

The smaller mech grumbled from the medical berth, "But I  _lost_."

"Of course you did! Look at you, the other guy was easily twice your size. I bet on Blockhead."

" _Bulk_ head," the injured gladiator said tersely as Knockout flipped the welder on, leaning into the shattered arm.

"Blockhead, Bulkhead, who cares, I got at least a week's worth of rations out of that bet."

The smaller mech groaned, and rubbed his helm with his remaining online arm, "I'm gonna knock his block off next time."

Knockout laughed, "His  _bulk_  off."

The other mech cut him a glare.

"Heh, sorry, couldn't resist," Knockout flipped the welder off, then returned to the pile of spare parts on his work table, rummaging through a box of wires and cables, "And not like  _that_  you aren't. What part of half-his-size didn't you compute, tiny?"

"It's Breakdown!" Breakdown snapped.

"My apologies!" Knockout purred, pulling a long red cable from the box and stripping the ends neatly, "Breakdown. A tough name for a tiny gladiator."

"I'm hardly a gladiator," He sighed, leaning back against the medical berth as Knockout returned with the soldering iron and the replacement cable, "It was  _one_  pit fight. Not even a leaderboard fight. That was barely even a scrap."

"You should just count yourself lucky he didn't make scrap of  _you_ ," Knockout chided as he pulled out the old, burnt out wiring, "He certainly had the opportunity."

"He won't get it again," Breakdown growled, "I'm reformatting."

Knockout paused, "To what?"

"Something bigger."

Knockout contemplated his position.

"Do you… have a mechanic yet? For that?"

"No…" Breakdown said, sideeying him suspiciously. Knockout's eyes glimmered at the prospect.

"How about this," He said, setting the iron down and leaning forward against the berth, "I've never had the opportunity to take a  _living_  specimen apart, and I could really use the data. Let  _me_  do the reformat, and you only have to pay for the parts. Most of them we can pull from the scrap heap in the Arena."

"I don't know how comfortable I am with that."

"Can you  _afford_  a real mechanic?"

Breakdown grimaced.

"I didn't think so. Look, I don't need to operate under any 'laws' or 'ethics' because I'm unregistered I can make you the biggest guy out there. And, when you hit the Pit again, the odds will be against you big time because you lost  _this_  fight. And because you're so tiny."

Breakdown narrowed his eyes.

"But! But, but, you won't be anymore. You'll be huge. And well equipped. And you'll trounce the slagger and we'll both make a heap of energon rations."

Breakdown considered this.

"…Alright," He said hesitantly, after a long, thoughtful pause. Knockout grinned.

* * *

"You trained yourself?" The massive gladiator said, surprised. Knockout swelled a bit with pride, then pulled the plating from the gladiator's chest carefully.

"For the most part. I was classed as an engineer, but I scrounged up some data packets and mostly learned via hands-on solo classes," Knockout said, clicking his claws against the battered armor he'd just pulled off the warrior.

"That's incredibly impressive. All the other medics here were kicked out of the academy for ethical malpractices of some kind."

"Well, I'm special then, I suppose," Knockout purred, then frowned, "I'm going to have to take the arm, I may have to rebuild it from scratch."

The gladiator nodded absently as Knockout bent over the joint, working fluidly and with well practiced motions, "Why did you class change?"

"Why, to earn my way to the surface, obviously. Being a low end engineer wasn't going to get me there," He sighed, then hefted the limb with a grunt, but quickly realized it was beyond his capabilities and dropped it back onto the berth with a clang, "Scrap. Breakdown, give me a hand, will you?" He paused, then laughed, "Heh. A hand."

Breakdown looked up from the datapad he was reading absently, then stood up, hydraulics hissing under his massive size as he trotted over and lifted the arm with ease, carrying it to an energon suspension bath and placing it in with a delicacy odd for his size.

"There we go, now, let's see about fixing that chest plating, D-18."

"Megatronus," the mech replied curtly.

"Ah!" Knockout said, eyebrows raising as he picked up the welder, "That's not what the datapad says," He gestured towards the datapad Breakdown was holding with the welder. Breakdown looked up belatedly, holding the datapad up slightly, not sure what the context of the conversation was.

"Slag the datapad," Megatronus growled, "I choose my name, and my path. Same as you,  _doctor_ ," He said, lip curling upward over the word. Knockout raised an eyebrow, then shrugged.

"Good point, Megatronus."

* * *

"You."

"Me?!"

"Yes,  _you,_ " Megatron repeated, obviously irritated. Knockout looked at the medics at each side of him, bewildered.

"But,  _me_? I'm still missing crucial data on almost every build!"

"But everything you  _do_  have, you got on your own,  _doctor,_ " Megatron rolled, and Knockout's optics widened.

"I honestly can't believe you remember me. I only operated on you once!"

"And you did a satisfactory job," Megatron continued, "You can pick an assistant. But I would much rather surround myself with those familiar with the places the Decepticons are working to abolish. There are no medics here who fully understand sacrifice the way you do, Knockout."

Knockout paused, glancing back at the rows of increasingly uncomfortable Decepticon medics standing in line around him.

"I can pick anyone?"

"Whoever you think is most qualified. But  _you_  will be my personal physician," He turned to go, and Knockout stood straighter.

"My lord! May I take Breakdown with me?"

Megatron paused, "The bulky mech from the scraps?"

"He's not a doctor, but he knows all my protocols and routines, my lord. And he could double as a bodyguard," He added hastily. Megatron considered it, then smiled, sharp denta punctuating the gesture.

"Granted."

* * *

The surface was beautiful, the first time he saw it. All dull red glows bouncing off the fractured cybertronium ground in patterns his sensors could not begin to trace. With every muzzle flare a new colour joined the painting of the landscape he was standing on, with every burst chassis a new shade of pale glittering blue decorated the land, with every explosion, a new flash of crimsons and oranges and smokey grey-blacks that misted over the world he had been striving for for more years than he, as Megatron said, should have had to survive only to stand beneath the sun.

The battlefield was beautiful.

He deserved to be here.

* * *

"Go scan something else," Starscream said, agitated. Knockout snorted.

"I don't think so. Unless Megatron specifically requests I do so, I don't feel I am obligated to. Seeing as I report directly to him, as his personal physician."

Starscream looked like he might burst a gasket.

"A Decepticon who chooses a  _land based vehicle_  as an alt mode? Surely you must be  _joking_ , Knockout. Are you  _trying_  to make a mockery of our noble cause?" _  
_

Knockout shrugged and raised an eyebrow, "No. But as a physician I have little use on the battlefield, anyway."

"If you think this gets you out of combat duty, Knockout, you are sorely mistaken," Starscream huffed, turning away, "You are dismissed!"

"Yes,  _sir,_ " Knockout purred, before turning on his heels and walking away.

He had reached the surface. He had no desire to pick up an altmode that would bring him away from it, even if he was of the wrong planet.

Even if it was to go higher.

* * *

He focused on his ventilations.

In, and out.

In, and out.

In, and-

He slammed a fist into the wall, leaving a sizable dent in the crushed metal.

In, and out.

 _I will not break down, I will not break down, i will not break down,_  repeated in his head, a dull echo beside the reverberating scream of the most important part,  _BREAKDOWN, BREAKDOWN, BREAKDOWN._

In, and out.

* * *

Cylas rose off the medical berth, back arching as he screamed, vocalizer popping with static as it hit a volume it could no longer produce.

Knockout smiled.

"That was for Breakdown," He said simply, before jabbing him with the end of the prod again, "Coincidentally, that was  _also_  for Breakdown."

Cylas fell back on the berth, ventilating desperately. Knockout dropped the prod on his table and picked up the first batch of synth-en he had recreated, flicking the needle carefully.

He pushed it into Cylas' arm, "So is this."

The screaming started again, and Knockout frowned as the clicking noise in Cylas' vents started again.

"No, no, that won't do," He said, standing up. He picked the welder up from where it lay on the table and turned it on. "Let's repair those vents, shall we? Luckily for you, all I need to do is strip the casing and replace the fan blades."

Cylas ventilated desperately, an angry, clicky sound punctuated by short, angry gasps as he struggled.

"Typically, I would turn off the pain receptors in that area for an intensive operation such as this. But you've made such a mess of your hardware, I just wouldn't know where to start!" He chuckled, holding the welder near the vent's seams. "So, I'm going to need you to focus on keeping your ventilations as even and steady as possible, or else this could be very, very painful. So, with me!" Knockout took in a deep invent with a smile as Cylas ventilations became more shallow and desperate with fear.

"In, and out."

* * *

He dropped the buffer with a groan. He had used too much force, and pushed bits of dirt and earth sedimentary into his armor, leaving a deep set of scratches down his arm plating. Breakdown had always been better at this than he had.

With Breakdown lost, there was no one on this ship left worth trusting. Megatron had long ago fallen to madness, but he had never fallen from power and he could not go against him. Soundwave was, well, Soundwave, Starscream was, well, Starscream, and Shockwave was-

Knockout sat up, steaming as he grit his denta, trying to calm himself down.

His friend, gone. His experiments, gone. And  _he_  was confined to the ship and so the surface, lost to him.

He tried to focus his ventilations carefully.

In, and out.

* * *

The Autobot's leader, Prime, was gone, and Knockout was not certain who he was supposed to brown nose to keep his good standing. He was going out of his way to be as obnoxiously friendly as possible, to try and curb the inevitable change of mind they would eventually have. He was on the surface of Cybertron, and he wanted desperately to stay there.

The medic was an obvious choice, as he was the oldest, and the only one left who had ever been in the higher castes. But he was so consumed by grief that he would have nothing to do with Knockout or his 'lesser' sciences.

There had been a brief few days when a friendship with the autobot's spy seemed possible, as they were both well known to have lost dear friends at the claws of Airachnid. But in the wake of their leader's death, they all now shared a common loss and folded into eachother in their grief, and Knockout remained an outsider still, even in that.

The laborer was also not a good option. His resentment of Knockout's former friend was too great, and the gap between them welled up, dark and angry.

The youngest of them, Smokescreen, didn't seem viable either. He was even more boastful than Knockout, which grated on his nerves and made him rethink his own behavior.

Ultra Magnus was absolutely out of the question.

The scout who had felled Megatron was the only remaining candidate, but he was so busy with rebuilding Cybertron that Knockout hardly had any time to try and impress him.

And so he was left with the only other 'Autobot' on Cybertron. The human pet that had come with them.

At first it was just a ploy to get Bumblebee to trust him, but after a bit of time spent with the alien, he had discovered it had a massive appetite for learning and scientific discovery that vaguely reminded him of what he had been like as a sparkling. Curious to a fault, desperate to class change. Sure, maybe not change his  _species_ , but it was a similar concept.

The alien was eager to learn and fairly passive. Knockout loved to talk and the human was quite content to listen, and despite his initial aversion found himself spending more and more time assisting him with the various tasks he'd assigned himself. The autobots seemed to approve, since it meant he was out of their wiring and it also meant their pet wasn't alone. Cybertron was still a dangerous place, especially for something with an endoskeleton.

He did keep a few more respirators handy than Ratchet had suggested, but really, that was just a self defense precaution. Protecting the human was protecting himself.

Or so he assured himself, over and over, every time he packed three extra.

* * *

Knockout pulled the hydraulics line out of its connector in the left arm with a delicacy he was not known for. Soundwave was ruthless, and unforgiving, and if he botched this little surgery he would almost certainly be signing his own death warrant.

"Alright, that should do it. If he can move, I will eat my own welder," he chuckled as he moved back.

"Yeah, I'll hold you to that, Doc," Bulkhead rumbled, and knockout frowned uncertainly. Autobot humor was still unfamiliar to him and he wasn't sure when they were being serious.

"Well, there's nothing left to do but fuel him up and turn him on."

"You're  _absolutely certain_  he won't be able to move?" Bumblebee asked, even as him arm shifted into a canon. Knockout stepped just slightly to the side.

"As far as all my scans are concerned, no, he should not be able to. I disconnected all the cabling to his limbs, he shouldn't be able to reattach them. If he could move though," He added as he reached for the perfected synth-en, "Whether he would kill you, or me first." Bumblebee frowned. Okay, that was Decepticon humour. Noted. Knockout sighed, twirling the syringe in his fingers, "Probably me."

He pressed the end into Soundwave's main energon line.


	4. Unfinished

**Unfinished**

The earliest memories were of cold.

A bleak and dying world filled with bleak and dying mechs at the end of time. The air grew stiller with each passing day, the world colder, the colours duller.

Everything was shutting down, slowing down, finishing.

But he was not finished.

Not yet. He had come into existence far too late and was far too young to die in a universe he by all rights should outlive.

He was not yet finished existing.

He had access to all the information left on his dying homeworld. There were so few remaining who cared to guard it, and so much left from billions of generations of scattered knowledge.

Spacebridges were a starting point.

Dimensional travel was not impossible. Never impossible. There were other universes out there.

So few refugees that escaped, and the residual chill from the ending universe left his processor chugging and churning, going in and out of stasis for ages. By the time he was really lucid enough to pull himself out of induced recharge and join the world he found himself on, there was no one left but him, and a drone.

Planet X was inferior, and it had died.

He would never allow himself to suffer the same fate. Not ever.

He hated it.

* * *

He hated Cybertron more.

But there were so few options remaining to him. He had snuck himself into a world that had no place for spare parts. It was already massively overcrowded. There were few places to turn but the black markets.

Which led him to the arena.

No one asked for origin data here. No one asked any questions at all. If he could kill his opponent, he would be rewarded.

He had watched so many die already. But he would not be one of them.

He was not finished existing yet.

* * *

"Commander Soundwave! Commander Soundwave!" The mech that ran up to him, calling his designation, couldn't have been more than a sparkling. She was young Vehicon trooper, obviously on her first cycle, but she carried a plasma canon like it was a familiar weight, and this perturbed him.

He turned toward her with a nod of confirmation, taking his eyes off the battlefield, if only for a moment.

"I told the border patrol I was an Autobot cut off from my unit, they let- they let me cross, and I got a datapad- a datapad with these plans, see, they just left it in the tent and I-"

The first shot hit him in the back.

He saw the muzzle flare too late, too bright, too far away. Soundwave jerked an arm wing up belatedly, and in retrospect was never quite certain precisely why he did. His arms were thin. They were not shields.

But he tried to shield the sparkling anyway.

He couldn't do much more than stare at the the smoking hole in his arm wing, perfectly circular, the edges still hot and ragged. He could not stop staring at the hole, because he could not force himself to look beyond it.

He could not look at the silent Vehicon femme. He could not look at the space her helm had vacated. He could not look at the space she should be, by all accounts  _should be,_  the place his sensors were alerting him nothing living was.

He could not. He could not.

* * *

The groundbridge flared up, bright green and swirling with energy. It had been a long time since he had had to delve into his memory banks and pull out information on interdimensional travel, but it had been there, waiting, a cold embrace of recollection.

He had so little time left. Lord Megatron's life signal was failing. He needed to get back  _now._  He needed to save him  _now._  He hit the groundbridge running, already calculating the fastest route. It was, of course, directly through the ship. He would need to cause massive damage to the structural systems to blast a hole big enough to get to Megatron in time, but if Lord Megatron went offline, the ship became irrelevant. It was a worthy sacrifice.

He exploded back away from the portal with a bang that blew his auditory sensors out and sent him into temporary stasis.

He came back online confused and in darkness. The room was empty. He was alone.

Soundwave onlined his auditory sensors hesitantly, but picked up nothing.

He had miscalculated.

The information from the dimensional trip between Planet X and Cybertron had not been, as he had assumed, what he needed to escape, as the alien had called it, "The Shadowzone."

And he had wasted 30% of his reserves on that assumption.

Already he knew he had more to waste, as his self repair was still in overdrive trying to fix the energon leak in his main line he had acquired when he had slammed into the wall.

The room was dark, and quiet, and he could not leave it. He had few options but to offline temporarily and schedule regular pings and comm signals to try and another Decepticon's attention.

No one answered.

Even in the minimum power mode, even spending most of his time offline, he couldn't last much more than an earth lunar cycle without refilling his energon reserves.

How ironic that he was the sole survivor of one universe, and the sole casualty in another.

* * *

_Waiting…_

_Waiting…_

_Systems Online. Energon Levels Critical: 20% Remaining. Recharge Terminated. Damage Status: Unconfirmed. Left Arm: Not Responding. Right Arm: Not Responding. Left Leg: Not Responding. Right Leg: Not Responding. Input 1: Functional. Input 2: Functional._

_Proximity Alert. Scanning. Autobot Life Signals Detected: 4. Decepticon Life Signals Confirmed: 1. Error. Autobot Life Signals Detected: 5. Decepticon Life Signals Confirmed: 0._

Soundwave's HUD blinked into life, and he onlined his optics. Internal requests for time and date returned only errors. Internal requests for location returned only errors.

He looked up into the faceplates of five appropriately nervous autobots, including one ex-Decepticon traitor.

His limbs were definitely not functioning, and he tried rebooting them, only to be met with connection errors. They had been manually disconnected. He would have taken a moment to be proud that they were so frightened of him as to take so many precautions if he weren't preoccupied with wanting to move so he could terminate them and return to Megatron.

He checked his systems connectivity again.

"Soundwave?" Knockout prompted hesitantly.

He would die first.

Systems check revealed the good doctor had failed to terminate the connections to his midsection input cables. A fatal mistake. He had always been a poor Decepticon.

The left side input cable shot out, slamming Knockout backward and into the regicidal scout directly behind him with a crash of scraping metal and several cries of surprise, while the other cable rushed to reconnect his right leg manually. The green wrecker dove forward, armed, and Soundwave grabbed the blue two-wheeler with his left cable as it swung towards him and slammed her into him. The wrecker paused long enough to try and catch her that Soundwave had his leg connected. He moved onto the left one.

The other Wrecker, the one he had spared, grabbed the right side cable before he could stop him and nearly had it severed, when Soundwave offlined his auditory sensors and activated the resonance blaster, sending them all, rogue included, to their knees, howling. His left leg onlined.

Climbing to his pedes was tricky, with the vibrations from the blaster shaking the floor and his legs not yet entirely online.

Just then, he received a ping.

As he made to erase it, he found himself unable to. It stayed, centered on his HUD, red and vibrant and angry.

Lord Megatron.

_The Decepticons are no more. All prior Decepticons are hereby ordered to cooperate with the Autobots in the restoration of Cybertron. Anyone found attempting to carry on the failed Decepticon cause alone will answer directly to me. The war is over._

His unsteady legs buckled beneath him, their unique jointing making the fall ungraceful. The resonance blaster slipped from his grip and tumbled to the floor with him, already forgotten. He scanned the message once, twice, three times, but all scans indicated it was genuine, and had been sent by Megatron directly. Lord Megatron was alive.

And he had abandoned him.

Soundwave wondered why the Autobots were not approaching him. The blaster was no longer on, it wasn't even  _equipped_  anymore, and he was blatantly disengaged. Unless the blaster was faulty and had not gone off when he had released the trigger. He onlined his auditory sensors.

He was crying.

It was definitely his own voicebox. His vocalizer had crackled to life without his permission and without his notice. It was no wonder the Autobots were staring at him with a mix of awe and confusion.

He had lost trusted partners to rifle blasts, and watched civilians gunned down in crossfires, had been forced to terminate opponents he knew did not deserve to be permanent offline, had been injured far worse than any other mech he had ever met, and had never heard himself make this noise before. He hadn't even realized he  _could_  make a noise like this- loud, and filled with all his pent up hate and anger and loss. He wasn't even close to sure how to make it stop.

His first thought was to reboot it and did so, but the noise just started again the moment his voicebox came back online. The yellow scout was the first to react, getting up hesitantly to approach.

The noise would not stop. He brought up his left input cable to tear out his vocalizer to  _make_  it stop, but then the yellow one was on him with a desperation Soundwave did not understand, yanking his limb away from his throat cables and yelling something he did not care to listen to. His vocalizer popped and crackled, the sound weening out with a high pitched keen, damaged enough.

He dropped the cables to the floor uselessly, utterly defeated. He allowed them to disarm and disable him fully, before dragging him and his drone back through the swirling groundbridge.

* * *

The alien stood a decent distance away. Its curiousity was obvious, but it was not stupid either, and it showed appropriate caution.

Soundwave did not acknowledge its presence.

"You know, Miko bet me you were just a computer," It said, eventually, shifting in the bulky Apex Armor, "But computers don't cry like that."

Soundwave played an error noise, one he had sampled from an earth system. He was fairly certain the human would recognize the sound as a negative.

"We fixed your vocalizer, by the way," It added, "You did a number on it trying to get it out."

He did not respond.

"Knockout said you probably got Megatron's ping."

He did not respond.

"We'll online your systems again when everybody feels like it's safe."

He did not respond.

"They're afraid of you."

Soundwave onlined his visor plate and displayed a smiley face. It was a graphic he was rather proud of- he'd never had the opportunity to use it, but had always liked it. Memory files tugged at the corners of his vision, begging to be opened. Ravage. The Vehicon sparkling. His second burned out homeworld.

"But I'm not."

He shut himself down.

* * *

"So, why did you stop talking in the first place?"

Soundwave groaned internally. The alien would not leave him alone. He'd received several visits from Autobots trying to goad him into speaking or swearing allegiance to the Autobot cause. Lord Megatron could stop him from being a Decepticon, but no one could make him an Autobot.

The human, however, seemed to only be interested in his  _backstory._

The human was annoying.

He played the error noise.

The human looked amused. Aggravating.

"Knockout said it was some kind of vow of silence."

Error noise.

The human sat back on its haunches with a curious expression on its face.

"Alright then, something else."

He played a minor cacophony of error noises.

The human just looked amused. Its behavior was infuriating.

"You know, you might have been a Decepticon, but so was Knockout, and all the Vehicons. And they're all out on Cybertron right now. The war is over. You're welcome to join them."

Soundwave did not respond.

* * *

"I don't think we should  _ever_  release him. Starscream might have been second in command- usually- but we all know Soundwave was Megatron's right hand mech. We can't just  _let him go._ "

Soundwave thought the two wheeler had a point. Were he in their position, he would not release his captive. He would also not keep a human pet around, or forgive the enemy's leader, exile or no exile.

But, he was the one strapped to a medical berth with all his systems offline, not them. So he had little room to judge their methods.

"Well, we did let  _Megatron_  go," the green one added uncertainly. Soundwave did have to give him that one. Ironic, after millenia of war, they just… stopped. Autobots were so fickle.

"Our planet is  _huge,_ " the Scout said, after a moment of contemplation, "And we have an  _entire_  species to rebuild. Soundwave was doing the same thing we were, and trying to revive his homeworld."

Soundwave would have laughed if he could. Irony again.

On the one hand, the scout-leader had been born after the war had already begun. Unlike the rest of them, he had never seen the pits, or the arena, or the lower floors of the starving cities. He didn't really know what he had been fighting against. On the other hand, he had impaled and murdered Lord Megatron.

Soundwave decided he disliked him.

"You got something to say, Soundwave?"

He did not.

* * *

"You really should just let them know you aren't going to kill them. We both know you have no intention to, not when Megatron ordered you to  _cooperate._ "

Soundwave cast Knockout a glance. Even without a face, Knockout did not miss the malice directed at him.

"But it's not my problem if you would rather spend your time underground. Personally, I hate it down here," Just for effect, he gave an overdramatic shudder, as if he were cold.

Soundwave was silent.

Knockout scoffed, "I'm only here because the human asked me to talk to you. He thinks you'll wear down eventually and join his little family, but he's wrong," Knockout leaned forward, squinting his optics, "I know you. They used to say you deleted your emotions during the war, but I don't think you did. I'm a  _scientist_ \- I'm honestly not even sure that's  _possible._  Getting out of here would be logical, but you're trapping yourself in your own body because you can't be a big bad Decepticon anymore."

Soundwave flicked on his screen, playing back an audiobyte, " _Watch out for the quiet ones._ "

"Not so quiet anymore though," Knockout purred, and Soundwave turned back away.

"I do have to thank you for not  _immediately_  killing me when you came online. You did put a  _nasty_  dent in my chest plate, though," he grumbled, tapping the spot self consciously. "You know, I'd never heard your voice before, but it certainly wasn't what I expected. I suppose you're restarting your vow now?"

Soundwave wanted to throw him out of an airlock. But he would have needed an airlock for that. And a ship. And the use of his limbs.

"If you have any sense of self preservation left, you'll tell them you're exiling yourself and just go along your merry way. Who knows! Maybe you'll find a nice uninhabited planet to mope on."

Soundwave accessed the ping from Lord Megatron again.

_All prior Decepticons are hereby ordered to cooperate with the Autobots in the restoration of Cybertron._

He rescanned the message for the 628th time.

No erroneous data detected.

He looked back at Knockout, who shrugged.

Soundwave opened a new message, and pinged the yellow scout-leader.


	5. Lucky

**Lucky**

He was lucky.

At least, that was what everyone kept telling him. He had been lucky to have been born from the Well of All Sparks before it had stopped. He had been in the last wave, the smallest wave, and he had been lucky.

But he did not _feel_  lucky. From the first moment of his life, he had been fighting. There was not even shelter and safety in the core anymore.

He told himself that he had been lucky to get a chance at life, when so many others did not or had lost theirs so early, but it still didn't feel right. He did, however, count himself lucky that an Autobot trooper had grabbed him when the last walls fell and physically  _carried_  him from the core. Not all his wavemates had been so lucky.

It was a small wave even before half of it was lost to a hail of Decepticon fire.

* * *

He nudged himself forward, tense, nervous. He knew he shouldn't be nervous, couldn't be nervous. This was war, and an army had no room for frightened sparklings. He was a soldier, had never been anything but a soldier, and he was going to act like it.

Bumblebee shifted his footing on the shifting mass of layered iron sheeting beneath him, the ground a mess of fresh and old rubble, and adjusted his auditory sensors, trying to filter out the dull roar of gunfire in the distance, to focus on the voices around the corner.

It was Megatron himself, talking to one of his generals. A battle strategy? He couldn't be sure. They were still to hard to hear.

Bumblebee adjusted his sensors again, filtering out any noise that wasn't coming from thirty yards away on top of the downed aircraft wreckage.

"…So we'll need to expand our efforts to the north. We can't know which direction Prime is headed, and we need to spread our forces thinner than usual to catch them, which means-"

Just then, something slammed into the back of his helm and sent him skittering to the ground, processor swimming with sharp pain and confusion.

He kicked his pedes out from under him, trying to swing back up to a standing position, scrabbling against the loose wreckage, but the faceless Con in front of him slammed a cable into his leg and flung him another ten yards towards Megatron.

He sputtered, coughing, trying to right himself, trying to transform, trying to run, trying to do  _anything_  but lie there gasping like a frightened sparkling.

Someone grabbed him by the neck cables and pulled him up.

Already his optics were fluttering, processor stressed past the point of rational thought, consumed by fear and anticipation.

He looked into Megatron's faceplate, and suddenly realized that he was going die.

He thought he might purge right there, internals twisting into terrified knots, but he was not a sparkling, he was a soldier, and he grabbed at the claws holding him up, already at least a full meter above the ground, kicking wildly. But Megatron did not even acknowledge his struggling.

"Good work, Soundwave," the Gladiator purred in a voice that screamed killer, and Bumblebee lashed out trying to grab for his chest plating, but was too far away.

"An Autobot scout, all the way out here? All alone?" Bumblebee grit his denta at him as the Decepticon leader continued, "My, my. You have made a foolish mistake, little one."

Bumblebee screamed something incoherently, angrily, and the fingers around his throat clenched. He felt his vocoder crack and cold liquid fear dripped down his spine, and he went still.

"Better. Where are the Autobots? We know they have the All Spark."

"Get defragged, Decepticon scum!" He cried, voice sounding far braver than he felt. The fingers tightened again, and a warning popped up, alerting him to the damage in his main energon lines. The pressure was too great. They were going to burst.

"I'll ask you again, scout. Don't think you're lucky enough to get a third chance." His grip tightened further and Bumblebee gasped as his internal system flooded with warnings and errors of imminent hardware failure. He heard unidentifiable snaps and pops and cracks, electrical whirrs and an uncontrollable static noise from his voicebox.

"I'll n- ev- ev- ever t-t-alk-" He stuttered out between bursts of static and whirring electronics, self repair desperately trying to keep up with the damage being done.

The warlord just smiled.

Bumblebee felt his energon run cold. He wasn't ready to die yet. He didn't  _want_  to die yet. Not here, not now, not  _ever._

He thought of his comrades, who also desperately did not want to die here or now or ever, all locked in a desperate covert operation trying to ferry the All Spark off world. The entire future of their race depended on keeping it safe and hidden, outside of the reach of this monster.

No sparkling deserved to be born like he did, a soldier from their first moments, peaceless.

Something else cracked on the left side of his neck, energon dribbling down between the breaches. It was warm against his sensors, something he was surprised to notice in this late hour.

The Decepticon leader really went the extra mile- rather than just crush his throat with one massive, taloned servo, he wrenched the circuitry out, tearing Bumblebee's faceplate down the jawline and straight into his mouth. He lost half his lower denta and the other half was still lodged in the inner plating of his helm, cutting into a tertiary energon line. He lost most of the upper left side of his jaw, neck cabling punctured and ruptured in a dozen places, errors screaming of critical leaks and irreparable damage to his voicebox.

But he hadn't talked.

"You're lucky I have places to be," the warlord sneered, lip plates curling over spiked denta, "You would not fare well on Shockwave's medical berth."

Bumblebee's optics flickered- though he may have flickered with them, because when they onlined again, he was alone. The ground was cold and the sound of gunfire was soft and distant.

The energon on his neck cabling was cool.

His optics flickered again, even as his audio sensors picked up the faint sound of approaching footsteps. It was too hard to keep them online, and he knew there was no point. He was too badly damaged.

Even as his audio sensors cut out again, leaving him awash in a dull static roar, he couldn't help but beam with a silent ride. He hadn't talked. Megatron could not make him talk.

No one could ever make him talk.

* * *

Bumblebee found he really enjoyed earth. It was so much quieter than Cybertron, the battles infrequent and isolated, both sides keen to stay hidden from the native species. The world itself was mostly quiet, and lacked the acid rain and generally fatal anomalous weather that had been so common on Cybertron.

The planet itself was also much smaller and had far less significant gravity, making him noticeably lighter as he navigated the surface. It was difficult to acclimate to, but definitely a positive. He had always been a fan of his speed, something that usually made him an excellent scout. With less gravity, he found he was clocking much higher numbers, practically gliding across the terrain.

He didn't really miss Cybertron all that much. All of his memories of that planet were laced with fear and indecision, death and panic and decay. They were not pleasant files to open.

Earth however, had a quiet charm that made it feel almost safer. The losses they suffered here were practically negligible compared to the absolute genocide on Cybertron. There were far less of them to lose, though.

The native species themselves were of interest, though the the dominant one was absolutely off limits, Optimus had made that pretty clear. That wasn't really a problem- he had no intention of interacting with them, as he had no way of communicating with them, and the cursory search he'd done on their culture indicated the ideas of both giant robots and aliens terrified them into irrational panics.

The rest of his unit on Earth was a tight knit one- one he was lucky to have. Despite it, though, the pressure of being likely the sole survivor of his wave weighed heavily on him- he was without a doubt the youngest Cybertronian on the planet and perhaps in the universe.

Everyone assured him he was lucky to be born, lucky to be alive, lucky to be following the last true prime. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

* * *

Bumblebee pulled up to the tiny public highschool, uncertain of what exactly he planned to do. The smallest human had seemed fairly perceptive, and had even noticed when Bumblebee had seemed upset that he'd crushed its toy, but he wasn't sure how he would convey a more complex sentiment like, "Optimus Prime ordered me to pick you up after school for your own safety, I'm totally not just kidnapping you," without being able to speak a language it would understand.

He really wished Arcee would take point on this. But she was "built as a spy, and point is really not my area." She was a good soldier but a frustrating friend. It really, really didn't make sense for him to be public relations expert on this one.

He wasn't sure what he was going to do. So he did what he was supposed to do: He opened the door.

"Hey," He beeped, and wasn't sure if the thin layer of hesitancy in his 'voice' would carry far enough that Arcee would hear it from where she had parked a few meters away, "Optimus sent me and Arcee to pick you two up."

The larger human looked immediately alarmed and started to back away, crying excuses, but the smallest human just smiled.

"It says we're supposed to get in," it said.

His world caved around him.

This was not a situation he had any experience in. He had not met another living creature that had understood him from the first introduction in  _millenia_ , since before he lost his voicebox. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say to someone who didn't have to learn what he was saying first.

He just said hello.

* * *

He was really just driving in circles, trying to kill time. He was a good scout, but nothing was going to happen today. Not here. But a daily perimeter check was important, and he  _was_  the only remaining scout.

Obviously, he'd brought Raf along. The human had neatly taken off his shoes and folded his legs under him in his passenger seat, and was just focused on the dashboard racing game he was, well, losing.

Bee eased up on the virtual gas a bit and let him speed ahead. It wasn't difficult to split his attention between the two things, there was no one on the road, and his alt mode was just as natural to him as his standard mode. He was dimly aware that most bots preferred a standard mode to vehicle mode, but he'd always liked the quiet earth roads- warm asphalt under a sun that wouldn't kill them and cool winds racing by under a myriad of bright colours that lit their planet's sky.

"Ha! I'm gonna beat you this time," Raf said, leaning dramatically to the left as he swerved his on-screen vehicle towards Bee's car.

"Oh no you're not," Bee chirped back, hitting the virtual breaks and letting Raf spin right into the wall. The human yelped with surprise, trying to pull himself out of a tailspin, but Bee raced off screen, completing the lap. He beamed when the little human chuckled, dropping the controller back down into the seat.

"You know, one of these days, I am  _totally_  gonna kick your butt at this game."

"I wouldn't count on it," he taunted back, "I'm as tricky a driver as they come."

"For now, maybe," Raf teased, picking the controller back up determinedly, "But only because you've had more practice. Just you wait. I'm a fast learner."

* * *

He slammed his servo into the wall with a high pitched shriek of unintelligible electric whirrs he didn't even bother trying to organize into some form of word.

"Whoa!" Bulkhead cried, backing away, startled.

Bumblebee's chassis heaved, venting heavily and rapidly. He could feel his energon heating up in his fuel lines, feel the tense jittering of his parts as they rattled against eachother in his anger.

A lucky human got a seventy cycle lifespan. A  _very_  lucky human got a hundred cycle lifespan. Rafael was not a lucky human, and was laying  _far_  to cold and still and pale on a tiny metal berth  _barely_  scraping past his twelfth cycle.

He had been unlucky to be in the care of the youngest, least experienced and least precautionary Autobot. He had been unlucky to know Bumblebee at all.

"Whoa, alright, cool it down there, Bee." Arcee stepped forward, servos up, obviously trying to placate him. Bumblebee would not be placated. When  _he_  had been a twelve cycle old sparkling he had been battered and damaged and wounded and had seen things no twelve cycle old sparkling should have to, and this was the  _first_  time he had ever met anything younger than him he could talk to, the  _first_  time he had made a real connection with anything alive not tainted by war and death. _  
_

And he had lost it.

* * *

"Raf is lucky to be alive!"

The words echoed in his processor, a grim reminder of how close he had come to losing the tiny human. He sat in the darkness, unable to untangle the strings of protocols and thoughts in his head enough to properly recharge, and stared at his servos.

He had been lucky.

He could still feel the dull ache of the blast in his joints and connectors. A warm, painful soreness that made him shift and twitch, unable to stay comfortable. He had taken the brunt of the hit, and even remembered his first thought when he had taken it- unbridled smugness, a sort of "Ha! I'm stronger than that."

Which had quickly turned to ice cold terror when he realized his occupant had been more injured than he was.

He clenched his servos into fists and shuttered his optics, frustrated.

He had been lucky. So very lucky.

* * *

"Raf, Primus, no, there is  _no way_  we are going to drag  _Megatron's communication's expert_  out of the Shadowzone. We still haven't ever beat him in a fair fight, we were  _lucky_  to get rid of him at  _all_."

The tiny human looked up at him, breath heavy through his respirator. Cybertron's restored atmosphere was much more accommodating of human life- the air at least wasn't  _toxic_  anymore, but it certainly couldn't keep a human breathing for more than a few seconds. Rafael had  _insisted_  on staying (the majority of the time) on Cybertron, and he was far too persuasive to be talked out of it.

It had taken him about a week and a half to develop an effective solution to the air problem. Even that he called 'slow work.'

His abilities would be intimidating if he weren't so accommodating most of the time.

"Bee, we  _can't_  leave him in there."

"He tried to kill you! He's nearly killed  _me_  a dozen times!"

Raf frowned, "He didn't kill me. He could have, but he didn't. Look, you can exile him if you want, but we  _have_  to get him out of there. We can't just let him  _rust._ "

Bee exvented heavily. Raf was very persuasive when he actually wanted something.

He commed Ratchet to let him know he'd changed his mind

* * *

"Alright, that should do it. If he can move, I will eat my own welder," Knockout chuckled nervously. Bee wasn't quite convinced, and moved just slightly to the right, behind the medic.

"Yeah, I'll hold you to that, Doc," Bulkhead laughed. Oddly unconcerned. Bee shot him a glance, and he shrugged.

"Well, there's nothing left to do but fuel him up and turn him on," The ex-Decepticon didn't look pleased to be in this position, but he was more battle ready than Ratchet, and far more familiar with Soundwave's systems.

"You're  _absolutely certain_  he won't be able to move?" Bumblebee asked, worried. He still wasn't confident that, even with five of them, they'd be able to take down a violent Soundwave.

"As far as all my scans are concerned, no, he should not be able to. I disconnected all the cabling to his limbs, he shouldn't be able to reattach them. If he could move though, I wonder whether he would kill you, or me first." Knockout seemed to think this was a joke, and Bee frowned at the inappropriateness of it, considering. Knockout seemed to notice his disapproval and sighed, "Probably me."

He adjusted his weight on his pedes testily as Knockout started filling the downed Decepticon commander with synth-en.

There was a beat, and then his visor lit up. Programs scrolled by faster than Bee could register, along with bootup protocols and data. He touched his own faceplate self consciously, and thought it would be so strange to have a face that showed all of his internal processes on the outside. He wondered if it was a sort of replacement for regular facial expressions.

"Soundwave?" The medic asked, voice dripping with the obvious desire to bolt that he seemed to be barely containing as it was. Bee was about to call him out on it, when suddenly the medic slammed into him hard enough that he went flying backwards off his pedes.

His initial thought was that Knockout had turned on them with Soundwave back on his side and attacked him, and had his canon already aimed at his helm when he looked up past him at Soundwave, whose left tentacle had grabbed Arcee and thrown her into Bulkhead- the same way he'd obvious thrown Knockout into Bumblebee. Immediately, he was washed in a cold guilt, but shoved it down, struggling to knock the doctor off of him and get to the attacking communications officer.

Wheeljack was already there, one servo wrapped around one of Soundwave's tentacles when quite suddenly he found the room filled with a screeching that sent him back to his knees, scrambling at the floor. Scrap, the resonance blaster. They had totally forgotten about it. It hadn't been on the Nemesis when they'd taken it- obviously Soundwave had taken a liking to it.

There was a crash, and the sound stopped.

Bee looked up just in time to see the blaster tumble from Soundwave's grip to the floor, his legs crumpled under him. Arcee was already up and moving.

"Wait!" He yelled. Soundwave was all about efficiency- if he wasn't attacking, something was wrong. His processor burned, trying to reason it out- plague? A virus from the Shadowzone? Something contagious?

A new sound rose up out of him, something totally unexpected. It started quiet, a brief sob that erupted into a violent wailing.

He was crying.

Bumblebee cast Arcee a glance, who looked back at him hesitantly, unsure of what to do. Did she want an  _order_? From  _him_? Bee shrugged, and stood up.

Soundwave looked distressed, screen running through programs- the noise stopped for a moment, and restarted. Bee dimly recognized it as a hardware reboot- he still wasn't very familiar with the workings of his own voicebox controls, but a reboot wasn't difficult to recognize. He took a step forward.

"Uh, hey, there, it's alright?" He offered uncertainly, when one of Soundwave's tentacles shot up. He and Arcee both dipped backward, weapons immediately raised, but Soundwave didn't go for them- instead, his pincer went straight for his own throat, tearing at his voicebox.

" _No!_ " Bee heard himself shriek, memory files tugging at the corners of his processor- the way his voicebox felt when it crackled and crunched, the warmth of the energon on his neck, the way his jaw ha torn- the months of recovery- wthout even meaning to, he dove forward and tackled the communications officer, grabbing at the cable to stop it. It had already done enough damage to send the crying into a whining staticy noise, but it didn't look irreparable.

The faceless mech just crumbled into a pile and let them drag him and his drone away.

* * *

"I bet he loooooves Megatron and he's just suuuuper sad, 'cuz his boyfriend dumped him," Miko giggled, and Bulkhead sighed, practically melting into the table he was leaning against as she tugged at his servo, trying to get a rise out of him as usual. Arcee shot her a look.

"As much as I hate the fragger, he did follow Megatron for Primus knows  _how_  long. Since before the war," She leaned back on her pedes against the wall, thinking, "He might legitimately have been overcome by the whole 'the Decepticons are no more' thing."

"Ya see? I told'ya," Miko purred through her respirator.

"I can't believe you actually went back for him," Jack sighed, and Arcee shrugged.

"Well, it certainly wasn't  _my_  idea," Knockout snorted indignantly, "I tried to talk him out of it."

Raf scuffed his shoes against the table self consciously.

"No, Raf was right. Going back for him was the right thing to do," Bee relented, finally, "And luckily, no one was actually hurt."

"He ruined my finish," Knockout mumbled from his corner, but returned to sipping his energon cube quietly when Bee shot him a look and gestured to the dent in his chest plating.

"So, what are we gonna do with him?" Smokescreen asked finally.

There was a long silence.

"I'm gonna talk to him," Raf said finally, voice as tiny as he was. Bee thought he must have  _glitched_.

" _What_? No, you will  _not_."

The others rushed to agree with him, and for a moment, he was actually startled by that. Raf shrugged.

"I'll take the Apex armor. He's  _definitely_  got all the right systems offline now," Knockout shifted uncomfortably behind his cube, "I'll be fine."

"Noooo. No, no, no way," Bee felt his processor churning at the idea, "You were  _lucky_  that he didn't kill you the  _many other times_  he had the opportunity to do so. We're not giving him another one." Bee shot a look at Miko as she moved to speak, "To  _any_  of you."

"You know," Knout piped up from the corner, and seemed to almost shrink back when all eyes turned to look at him, "I got the same ping he did. Megatron  _did_  order him to cooperate. Obviously, that wouldn't really matter to someone like  _Starscream_ , but Soundwave has always been loyal to a fault. I don't think hes going to be that much of a problem right now."

Bee looked back at Raf, who was staring at him expectantly.

A memory filed tugged at his processor. A tiny alien in his backseat, still and crumpled and cold.

"Fine," he sighed finally, and a murmur of surprise went through the circle, but if they wanted to disagree, they didn't.

Raf beamed.

* * *

Bee was running perimeter checks around Kaon when he recieved a ping from Soundwave.

It didn't even contain any text. It was just a data packet. He ran a cursory virus check on it, before opening the data. It was massive- uplinks to schematics to Decepticon sciences and structural plans, data on dead Decepticons, Autobots and third partiers alike- pages and pages of information on the remaining Decepticons scattered around the Universe.

It was everything.

The files shut him out, prompting him to open an attached memory file before accessing any of the other data. Uncertainly, he opened a comm channel and called Knockout.

Before he could even say  _hello_ , Knockout spoke.

"I know why your calling. He just sent you a data packet, didn't he?"

"What? Why, did he send you one?" Bee asked, confused as he turned to head back towards the old council chamber they'd been using as a base.

"No," Knockout's voice sighed through the crackling static, lacking his usual sarcastic bite, "I'm with him."

Bee actually laughed, "What, seriously?"

"Yes, seriously," Knockout said, sounding quite serious.

Bee sobered. "Oh. Um, thanks, Knockout."

"Yeah," he could practically  _hear_  the discomfort in the medics voice. Belatedly it occurred to him that Megatron was not really one to thank his underlings, "Don't worry, I had him send me a copy. It's... well, technically safe."

"What do you mean 'technically?'"

There was a long pause before Knockout responded, "It's just a memory file. One I'm sure you would appreciate. Should I... I mean, should I online his systems? S...ir?"

Bee wasn't sure what to react to first. The vagueness of the description, the question, or the hesitant 'sir' tacked onto the end awkwardly. Yeah, no, definitely that.

"Okay, seriously, don't ever call me sir again."

"Right, gotcha, nix on that then."

"Second, what in the pit are you talking about?"

"The other files won't reopen until  _you_  play the file. It's bio-encoded. He's rather stubborn on that, I'm afraid. It's just not a  _nice_  memory."

Bee would have shrugged if he'd been in standard mode. As it sat, he felt more confident about opening the file. After all his suffering, there was not possibly any event he could be shown that would surprise him.

"Don't online him yet. I'll be back in twenty."

He cut the comm and played the file.

* * *

He was young again.

His optics, blinked uncertainly, colours and messages flooding his processor.

_Energon Levels Critical: 43% remaining. Left Arm Damaged: 84%. Right Arm: Undamaged. Right Leg: Undamaged. Left Leg: Undamaged. Audio Sensors: Damaged. Require Replacement. Vocalizer: Damaged. Require Replacement. Optics: Damaged. Require Replacement._

They cleared before he could finish reading them. He was obviously damaged- his left arm was mostly gone, cut off when the portal closed prematurely. He had been lucky to lose only that. He tapped the ground, and felt cold steel beneath his servos. He picked himself up uncertainly, leaning on his remaining arm.

He sent his self repair to fix the leak in his arm.

Even on his feet, he felt unsure. Uncertain. This world felt wrong. The ground being metal was a new one. He recalled the terrestrial feel of rock on his homeworld, and felt himself miss it, even if he couldn't bring himself to miss the cold and the isolation.

His sensors indicated there was light- he quite suddenly and belatedly realized he was blind. He touched his face hesitantly, and shuddered when he felt the extent of the damage. He didn't need to touch the rest of his armor to feel the welded burns up and down the metal, the tiny pieces that had been seared together by the heat from the modge podged portal he'd gone through.

He tried to call out, and found his vocalizer broken. He ran three scans, but none indicated even devoting 100% of self-repair resources to it would help. It was broken- along with his auditory sensors and his optics and his arm.

Immediately, his systems flared into a panic.

He sank back to his knees, totally cut off from the world as a panic rose in his sparkchamber, cold and wet. Just as he was about to crumple into himself, he felt a ping. It tugged at his processor, and requested a connection.

 _The drone._  The drone had made it through! He would have laughed if he could- but settled for just allowing the connection.

His vision filled with light, and his audio sensors buzzed, starting from a low rumble to a decent volume of activity- wind, air pressure, the steady thrum of motion beneath the surface and in the distance. He turned his head, but the image remained stationary. Belatedly, confused, he realized he had connected directly to the drone's sensors. He pinged it to look around.

The ground was, as he had thought, solid metal. What he hadn't known, was that it went for miles in each direction. He exvented steadily, and focused on looking for the others. The drone had made it through safely, surely his sire and carrier had, as well. The drone flapped its metal wings, rising up slightly to get a better view.

He was alone.

For stainless steel mile after stainless steel mile, he was the only consistent life form.

He and the drone were the only one in the desert.

The panic began to rise in his throat again. He tried to cry out their names, but the sounds died before they reached his mouth. Broken vocalizer.

The drone pinged him, alerting him to an object of interest nearby.

He recalled the drone, and after a bit of adjusting, had it attached over his sparkchamber. He swung around, stepping carefully in the direction of the object. Adjusting to the lower field of sight was difficult.

He practically stepped on the helm before he saw it.

it was still connected to the remainder of one shoulder and an arm, cold energon dripping from the core connections at the edge of what was left of the upper ceiling of the spark chamber. His servo shook holding it, and the drone picked up the clattering noise his fingers made, rattling against the metal of his carrier's helm as he held it at arms length away from him in abject horror.

He dropped it.

It clattered to the ground with a dull thunk and he skittered backwards, venting heavily, unable to clear the wet fear from his filters.

His scanners lit up. Replacement parts located. He cleared them immediately.

They came back, alerts of his critical energon levels, his burnt out vocalizer, his burnt out audio sensors, his burnt out optics.

His remaining servo clicked against the ground, shaking, as the warnings piled up, and sensors alerted him of the perfectly viable replacement parts just three feet away from him.

He checked the drones energon reserves.

20%. It wouldn't last much longer. He turned his attention back to the helm

He stood, shaking, and clenched his servo at his side. He wished he could just delete his emotions.

He would not die here.

* * *

The memory cut out, and Bumblebee realized he had actually crashed himself into a ditch. He wasn't sure when, but his back tires were still spinning. He transformed and just sat on the ground, thinking.

He wasn't even entirely sure what he had seen. The concept of a carrier had been so clear in the memory- and vaguely that of a sire, too, even though it was totally foreign now. In the memory of a memory, it struck him as being somewhat similar to the concept of a human parent- but that wasn't certainly where native Cybertronians came from.

But Soundwave wasn't a native Cybertronian. He dimly wondered if that's what Ratchet had meant when he said that Soundwave wasn't a normal Cybertronian.

So, Soundwave came from a universe that was different from theirs. A universe with carriers and sires, and he had lost both of his. It was a lot of information but all he could really focus on was the fact Lazerbeak was a lot older than he had thought she was. Perhaps because there were things he was trying not to think about.

It took a moment to come to a conclusion of why he would have even  _sent_  this particular memory. He'd honestly expected videos of the gladiator battles- some kind of attempt to prove how right the Decepticons had been.

Instead, he'd sent him something older, something personal. Something predating the war. Something that had  _nothing to do_  with the war, because this wasn't about the war.

He could still feel the lingering emotions that came with the end of the memory packet. Regret. Remorse. A dull, cold dread. And the distinct feeling that Soundwave's voice was not something for sharing. He did't speak, because he didn't have a voice he wanted anyone else to hear. It was private. He suddenly felt guilty thinking about the aching weeping that had poured out of him on the Nemesis.

He wasn't trying to convince him the Decepticons had been the nobler cause because he knew that was pointless. He wasn't trying to convince him of his loyalty to the Autobots because that would have been to blatant a lie.

It was because he was the only one who would understand. He had thought, for the longest time, that Soundwave had lost his voicebox like he had- until he spoke when Team Prime had captured him- something he doubted Soundwave was even  _aware_  of, considering he'd deleted his memory. It wasn't even because he'd lost his voicebox specifically, either- it was because no one could understand him. The way he spoke was so different that just trying to connect to a new teammate could take months sometime downloading the data packets on his language. He'd been an outsider even among his own.

Like the refugee Soundwave, who'd had to relearn everything to communicate with the Cybertronian natives.

They were all lucky to have survived the war, and they were all tired of fighting.

He commed Knockout, "Go ahead and put him online. He can leave if he wants."


	6. Uncertainty

**Uncertainty**

Bulkhead sighed, a deep, rumbling noise from the innermost chambers of his chassis as he stood in front of the arena. There weren't any fights today- most of the miners were busy with the mines. He was only a labourer, but the construction company he'd worked for had laid him off and he had nowhere else to be anymore.

He'd been lucky to have a friend a few floors up who had offered him a job, even if the pay was lower than he was used to. It was still better than nothing. The only problem remaining was getting the appropriate funds together to move himself up those floors.

So he found himself at the arena.

He'd only been a few times, and only as a spectator. There wasn't much else to do on the lower floors but work and talk about whatever new gladiator hadn't died that decacycle. He'd never even thought he would be at the gates applying for a scrap.

The lower levels fights didn't pose too much danger, luckily- there usually wasn't as much pressure to kill your opponent, not like the high level gladiator fights where it was an unspoken requirement. He only needed to win one fight to get onto a ship. If he took a spot in the cargo, he might even have a little left over to try and put down on a new garage once he got there. The trip took a few hours at most; he'd survived far worse.

The mechs who took down his info for the fight shook servos with him and flashed him smiles that made him uncomfortable. But it was only one fight. He needed the money.

It wasn't like it was going to haunt him the rest of his life.

* * *

 

"Hoo, yeah!" He whooped, turning to the meager seatings in the stands as they cheered. He turned back to his grounded opponent, struggling to sit up on his crushed arm. "Good fight, eh, buddy?"

The smaller mech didn't respond other than to squint his eyes dangerously at him. Bulkhead shrugged nonchalantly, and went back to basking in the cheering.

He was dimly aware of the red and white medic who ran past him to his injured opponent, but it wasn't his concern. Not only had he won, but he'd escaped mostly intact and undamaged. It had hardly been a fair fight, but it had earned him what he needed.

He was moving up.

* * *

Way up.

He'd barely had a a decacycle to enjoy the surprisingly less hostile environment of lower middle Kaon when the skirmishes had started. On the lowest levels first, he'd heard through whispers behind welding masks and from the dregs of the mines. Then screaming, in the alleys behind his garage block, when miners and labourers gathered in angry mobs and screamed at peacekeepers who pushed them back.

Bulkhead himself was caught, uncertain. On one hand, he could sympathize with Megatronus' followers and the lower caste's complaints- since he was among them. At the same time, he wasn't a fan of unnecessary violence, and found himself agreeing more and more with the council broadcasts that floated over the radio at sunset - decrying acts of revolution and begging the lower classes to stow their weapons and discuss the class issues rationally.

He liked to tune the old shop radio to a broadcast that came out of Iacon best- a mech named Orion Pax who spoke of justice like it was something real.

It was on one such evening he found himself resting in his garage block, joints still weary from a day's labour and Orion Pax desperate pleas for peace floating from the radio, that someone grabbed his radio from the sill it was sitting on, overlooking the waves of backalleys and winding inner subcity corridors and slammed it into the pavement.

Bulkhead jumped up in surprise, rushing to the window to grab what he suspected was a rowdy sparkling causing trouble, only to find much worse.

There was a crowd in the streets, accompanied by a dull chant of "justice" that he had mistaken for the usual roar of activity. His energon ran cold when he saw the peacekeeper strung up to sign- one he was familiar with, so close to his home- an Autobot initiative recruitment poster.

The peacekeeper was still struggling weakly, despite the cables holding him taut against the sign, while a few mechs stood on top of the sign, shrieking speeches of fighting and justice and revolution.

"They would see us starve, while they bathe themselves in decadence!" The ringleader shrieked, wings bobbing up and down fervently on his back as a smaller mech poured a bucket of energon over the limply struggling peacekeeper. "I say- let them reap what they sow!"

Bulkhead was already skidding out the doors, not even certain what he intended to do. Save the peacekeeper? Join them?

He didn't get a choice. By the time he reached the alley and the crowd and the chanting, the peacekeeper was burning.

He left that night for the Autobot recruitment center two floors above him.

* * *

"If I survive this, I'm joining the Wreckers."

The mech beside him stopped adjusting the strapping on his arm canon and turned to balk.

"The  _suicide squad_?" He cried, incredulous. Bulkhead just nodded gravely. "Bulk- come on, what on Cybertron are you talking about? Do you  _want_  to die?!"

Bulkhead frowned, "No, come on, no. But let's be real. None of us are gonna make it to see the end of this thing. I just wanna make sure, you know. I make it count."

"You can't be serious..." The smaller mech practically whispered, "I'm making it to the end of this. There's no way I'm gonna die here."

He returned to neurotically adjusting the straps on his makeshift arm canon.

* * *

Bulkhead scrambled to get himself out from under the Vehicon soldiers pinning him down. His armor was thick, and their initial blasts hadn't done much damage yet, but they certainly would if he didn't get them off  _now_.

"Commander Impactor!" He heard himself yell, still clawing at the ground, desperately trying to pull himself out from under the swarm, but it was too late. Impactor's helm came off with a screech of metal and a loud pop of electrical systems, and Bulkhead nearly lost himself in the swarm.

From there, it went blurry- a mess of coils, the dying glow of an extinguished spark, a torn helm, cables and energon splattered everywhere- but when he looked up, he was standing in a pile of offline Vehicon troopers.

Breakdown was clinging to a lifter, already out of firing range, but he turned around, midair, still clenching the handholds of the lifter tightly with one hand to shoot Bulkhead a smile, tossing Impactor's helm in his other hand like a ball.

If Wheeljack hadn't dragged him back, he would have run right through the front lines chasing him, screaming.

* * *

"You're  _leaving_  the  _Wreckers_?"

"Jackie-"

"How could you  _leave_?"

Bulkhead rubbed the back of his helm with his servo and exvented heavily. He had known this wouldn't be an easy conversation.

"It's just- the new Prime? He seems-"

"Seems what? More honorable than the others? Come on, Bulk, the Wreckers aren't  _followers._ "

Bulkhead grit his denta, "Yeah, we are, Jackie. We follow eachother straight to the All Spark. And I... I joined up, because I didn't wanna go offline without it meaning something. I really think I can do more good out there. With the Prime."

Jackie huffed, clenching his servos at his sides, "You're gonna follow some half-baked religious  _figurehead_  to your death, and it won't mean a fragging thing, same as the rest of us. When were you going to tell me? When the alarm went off and you weren't behind me?"

"Come on, Wheeljack, you  _know_  I've always got your back-"

"No, Bulk, you don't! Not anymore! When did you apply for a transfer?" He was yelling, actually yelling now, and Bulk was starting to worry this was going to come to blows.

"Last week. It just got approved today. I ship out in the morning."

There was a long moment where Wheeljack just stared at him, facing running through a dozen emotions, before he turned on his pedes and walked away without another word.

It was a long time before Bulkhead saw him again.

* * *

"Happy White Day, Bulkheeeeaaad!" Miko squealed, and shot him in the pede with a streamer canon.

"Miko!" He yelled, nearly toppling himself over in his surprise. It hadn't  _hurt_ , but it had certainly surprised him.

She, however, ignored his protests, and settling for scrambling up the stairs to the walkway to meet him at eye level.

"Didn'tcha hear me, Bulk? I said, 'Happy White Day!'"

"Uh. It doesn't look that white to me," He said uncertainly, looking around. Just for good measure, he checked his armor. Still green. Well, the parts he could see. Which wasn't much without a mirror.

She stifled a giggle with a snort, "No,  _dude_ , it's a holiday! We're gonna celebrate today!"

"Well, uh. What are we gonna do?"

"We're going to Okinawa!"

"What- you mean in  _Japan_?"

Miko straightened up with a grin, "Yup! Just you and me, buddy. There's something I wanna show ya."

"It's not... dangerous, is it?" He asked, casting her a look he hoped carried his "please don't make me put you in danger again" stance heavily enough, but if she caught it, she ignored it.

"Nope! And you better appreciate it, because I'll probably never invite you to do something this boring ever again."

Bulkhead shrugged, "Alright, I'll comm Ratchet and have him turn on the groundbri-"

"No need!" She purred, hopping down the steps two at a time, "Raf's all over it! Right buddy?"

"Huh? Oh, um, yeah, I guess," Raf said, peaking over the top of the couch when he heard his name.

"Yeah!" She whooped, skipping over to Bulkhead's pedes and waiting for him to transform. She was practically floating on her own excitement by the time she scrambled into his passenger seat, reassuring him with ever increasing volume how much he was going to love this.

"So is this like, a traditional thing y'all do or what?" He asked as Raf typed into the control pad and she shook her head.

"No, but I don't think bots eat chocolate."

"Uhhh." He really wasn't sure how to respond to that, but she didn't seem to mind, as the groundbridge roared to life, and she bounced happily in her seat. He drove through the portal and found himself on a quiet street overlooking the ocean.

"Look!" She cried, pressing her face and hands against the passenger window. He exvented heavily, turning a corner to see where she was gesturing.

They were flowers.

Hundreds and hundreds of these little trees lining the streets, all glittering with pink flowers that waved gently in the breeze.

"Those are the cher- those are the sakura," she said, the end a bit more quietly, "They only bloom like two weeks out of the year. They're really pretty."

He drove slower than she was usually content with as she leaned out the window, pointing to things and places, and excitedly telling him everything she knew about them, as he navigated the curving island roads overlooking the swaying cherry branches and the gentle frothing of waves breaking against the rocks.

* * *

Bulkhead leaned against the platform as the on screen events got more intense- the car he'd bet on was in a corner, backed up by Miko's pick. Just as they were coming to a collision, Miko spoke up.

"Hey, Bulk? How come Raf won't go home?"

He lowered his servos and leaned forward to look at her, spread out on the base's one couch.

"Ratch says he needs the help around the base."

She sat up and leaned against the back of the couch, the tv forgotten, "Yeah, but, like, doesn't he miss his family? He's like three years old."

"He's  _twelve_  Miko, you're not  _that_  much older than him. What, don't you miss  _your_  parents?"

She looked startled by that, then thoughtful, then flopped back down onto the cushions.

"Whatever, I dunno. I think it's dumb."

Bulkhead shrugged.

* * *

"Miko, come on, I really don't think that's safe-" Miko was most definitely not listening to him. "Miko!" He said again, louder, and finally she turned to look at him, kicking up a leg and clasping her hands together dramatically as she pouted up at him.

"Awww Bulk, come on! I wanna go to Cybertron, too!"

"Miko, you've been to Cybertron a dozen times."

"Yeah, but always in that big bulky space suit! I wanna use the face thing Raf made!"

"Ratchet hasn't  _tested_  it yet, they can't know it's safe-"

"I'll test it!"

"Miko-"

"It's for science, Bulk!"

He exvented deeply. There was never any point to arguing with her. Miko always got whatever she wanted. "Fine, but only if Ratchet gives you the okay."

She jumped up, pumping a fist into the air, "Yesss!"

* * *

He skidded through the groundbridge, carrying her as she gasped and heaved, hands twitching over the respirator she couldn't quite pry away with her shaking fingers.

It was all he could do to get her on the ground without banging her on anything, "Miko, Miko! You have to get it off, it's not working right!" His servos hovered over her, uncertain, fingers far to large to do anything but crush her.

"Move!" cried a voice behind him, just before Jack ran between his legs, without giving him time to comply. He had it off her immediately and she rolled onto her side to purge, still gasping.

She spent hours trying to reassure him he hadn't been useless, but for once, her stubbornness wasn't enough to convince him.

* * *

"Rafael, I'm taking a trip out to Tarn to pick up some data packets from one of the hospitals there- I thought you might want to come and see the city? It's mostly still there, the Decepticons kept it as a kind of mini-capital, so there's probably still some sights to see. We could take a drive."

Bulkhead leaned around the corner, uncertain he'd heard correctly.

"Huh? Oh, sure!" Rafael clicked his laptop shut, and slid it into his backpack before standing up and trotting to the edge of the table. Bulkhead scratched his helm, not sure what to think when Ratchet picked the human up and set him on one of his shoulder pads, before turning and leaving out the opposite corridor.

* * *

"Hey, Ratchet, are you alright?"

Ratchet looked up at him, raised an eyebrow, then looked back down at his calculations.

"Of course I'm alright. I ran a systems check this morning."

"No, I mean, like, you've just been, you know, acting kinda weird lately." He added awkwardly, and Ratchet exvented, raising a hand to press between his optics.

"I've had a lot of work to do, between the whole restoration-of-our-dead-homeworld, and Raf's projects, and the Decepticon commander tied up in our basement, so  _excuse me_  if I'm not a bag of  _rainbows._ "

"Yeah, uh..." He paused uncertainly, "I'm just worried about you."

Ratchet softened some, then straightened up again, "Yes, well, don't. I like being busy."

Bulkhead was going to argue, but Ratchet brushed past him and down the far corridor before he could.

* * *

He was armed when he came through the groundbridge. Miko's text hadn't specified the problem- all she had said was "need u. come now."

And he had come.

The first thing he noticed was that there didn't seem to be any fighting. He turned in a circle, looking around- and saw her. She was sitting on the walkway above the groundbridge, hugging her knees. She looked down at him without any of her usual pep, practically deflated, and let his arm transform back to its usual shape.

"Miko? What's wro-" He started, but she shushed him and point past him. He turned back around, where she was pointing. It was June Darby- talking to Raf. They both seemed upset. She was gesturing a lot, and it looked like he was determinedly staring at the ground, trying to bore holes in it with his eyes alone.

"You wanna go?" He asked quietly. He was certain they were aware he had come- the groundbridge wasn't exactly quiet, but they seemed to be pretending he wasn't there, and Bulkhead wasn't keen to upset that status.

She nodded and waited for him to pull one of the spare- and, thank Primus, fully functional, tested, working- respirators from his chest compartment and hand it to her. She dropped off the platform and onto his shoulderpad without her usual bouncy excitement and they both slipped back out the groundbridge as quietly as they could.

* * *

"Ratchet, are you sure you're alright?"

Ratchet cut him a look that could kill.

"I assure you, Bulkhead, I am  _fine._ "

"It's just. I mean, I'm not great with medicine, or computers or anything-"

"So you probably don't really have any room to judge the matter-"

" _but_ ," he cut back in, sternly, "It  _kinda_  looks like you're trying to cure the common cold there."

Ratchet exvented heavily.

"And? Is there something wrong with that? We're millions of years ahead of the human race, I don't see any problem with using our superior resources and medical advancements to try and cure some of their diseases."

Bulkhead grimaced, "So, you're trying to cure it... to benefit the human race?"

Ratchet nodded coldly.

"Not because Raf's sick?"

Ratchet slammed his servos into the databank, sending a flurry of sparks as he spun around, "And so what if I am?!" He yelled, and Bulkhead stumbled back, floored with surprise, "Don't forget that Miko's human, too- their lifespans are  _short enough_  as is, I will  _not_  lose him to disease before his time!"

Bulkhead's servos twitched at his side, not sure where to go or what to do as Ratchet swayed, visibly upset, "Y'know, I think Optimus wou-"

"Frag Optimus!" Ratchet cried, and Bulkhead's mouth clamped shut. Two words he had never expected to hear so close to each other from  _Ratchet_ , "And frag you, too! Now- now-" Ratchet's optics darted around, like he wasn't even sure what to look at, and Bulkhead stepped forward, not sure if he needed to show some support right now, or leave, or, what precisely, "Now get out of my lab," he finished, straightening suddenly, staring him down. Bulkhead backed up and vanished out the doors.

The lock clicked into place behind him as the door whooshed shut. He leaned against the metal, and considered calling Wheeljack, when he heard the distinct sound of quiet sobbing from inside the bay, and chose to stay quiet.

* * *

The doors slid open as Bumblebee came in, looking strangely concerned.

"Hey, Bee, what's goin' on?" Bulkhead rumbled, and Bee swayed to a stop, rubbing his helm with one servo.

"I told Knockout to let Soundwave go."

Bulkhead laughed, before he realized Bee was serious and stumbled to his feet, "You  _what_?"

"Honestly, I think he's just as sick of fighting as we are. At this point I think he probably just wants to leave."

"You can't  _know_  that!" Bulkhead boomed, and Raf peaked his head over his laptop from his spot on the other side of the council chamber, along with Ratchet. "That fragger's nearly killed all of us at least once! How could you just let him  _go_!"

Arcee appeared from around a corridor.

"It was- I mean- trust me, it was the right thing to do."

"Tell me he at least plans to be useful," Arcee snapped bitterly, and Bulkhead sighed with frustration, turning away.

"Honestly, it doesn't really matter. He sent me a datapacket with at least a hundred Decepticon locators. We can track them all down now- plus, we have confirmations on the statuses of way more Autobots than I really wanna think about right now." He looked at Ratchet, "And all their schematics. There's a lot we can do with this."

Ratchet's optics widened, "He just  _gave_  it to you?"

"Yeah, that doesn't sound like Soundwave," Arcee piped in, leaning against the doorframe.

"Yeah, he just gave it to me. Like I said, I think he just wants to leave."

Bulkhead couldn't contain another sigh, though he thought, perhaps a bit bitterly, that if there was a cap on how many times one could sigh in a single day he was rapidly approaching that number.

"Let's see the confirmations then," He said, and Bee turned back towards him, "been a lot of Wreckers missin' since the war ended. Be nice to put their memories to rest, at least."

* * *

"Nah, come on, ya lugnuts, that doesn't go there!" Bulkhead called up to the Vehicons, who were, as he was finding, entirely unreliable as a workforce. It was no wonder a squad of five Autobots had been able to match an entire Decepticon fleet for so long. They were really only good at taking  _very specific_  orders.

They looked down at him, confused.

"Uh, can we see the plans again?" One called down, and Bulkhead sighed.

"Yeah, come on back down, let's go over this again."

The Vehicons all straightened up, before clumsily dropping everything they were holding and retreating into the half finished structured with startled gasps. Bulkhead raised an eyebrow.

"What in the pit are you guys doin'?"

"Sir- behind you-" One said meekly, and Bulkhead turned. He nearly toppled himself over backing up, away from Soundwave, who was standing behind him with that sinister silence he was so well known for.

"I- uh- hey- you- uh-" Bulkhead stumbled, not sure if he should be combat ready or present some kind of awkward politeness, since, like Bumblebee had said, when Soundwave had come back online, hadn't seemed interested in doing much of anything in the vicinity of violence. Soundwave pointed at the datapad in his servos.

"Huh? You... want this?" He asked hesitantly, holding it up. Soundwave's arm dropped, and he nodded. Bulkhead shuffled forward uncertainly, and handed it to him.

One of his cables dropped, and connected to the datapad. There was a brief flurry of activity on his visor, before he disconnected, and offered the datapad back. Bulkhead eyed him suspiciously, and accepted it.

For the second time in five minutes he nearly fell over stumbling away as Soundwave transformed and jetted into the air. Before he even had time to react appropriately, Soundwave was standing on the railing of the platform the Vehicons were standing on.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing!" He started, but if Soundwave heard him (which Bulkhead was certain he did), he ignored him, and dropped an input cable, connecting to the closest Vehicon at the wrist with a flurry of activity on his visor. Bulkhead's servo twitched uncertainly, not sure if equipping himself would be good preparedness or just further escalate a confusing situation. The first Vehicon nodded, and disconnected, as Soundwave moved onto the second one.

"Don't worry, sir-" The first Vehicon turned to call down to Bulkhead from the railing, "He's just downloading the datapacket with the blueprints."

The Vehicon turned around and returned to his welding, with visibly increased confidence. Soundwave finished the last Vehicon worker, and dropped back down to ground level.

"Uh... thanks, I guess," Bulkhead said, uncomfortable, and Soundwave nodded, before turning and walking back the way he had come.


	7. Interpersonal Relationships

**Interpersonal Relationships**

"Do you understand why you were chosen from your wave?"

"I was the smallest, sir."

"Right. Have you been equipped sufficiently?"

"Sir. My chassis has been stripped of all redundant armour and refitted with both long and short range weaponry. I am combat ready."

She looked up at him, unwavering in her attention as the far taller mech continued, "What are you optimized for, soldier?"

"Infiltration, assassination and intelligence gathering, sir."

"Your commander has cleared you for active duty. Are you ready for your first assignment, recon unit?

"Yes, sir."

"Have you picked a name for yourself yet?"

"Arcee, sir. For Re-Con."

"Very well. You are being transferred to Kaon for an undercover mission. The specifications are in your inbox. You leave at at 0600 hours."

"Sir."

* * *

She strode into the room carrying more presence than an assassin was usually permitted to, for once set to her most casual level of medium alert.

All heads went up.

She did not acknowledge them, obviously, because she already knew why they were staring. She was the smallest bot in the room by far, and likely the smallest they had ever met. Probably the least armoured one, too. She knew her form was rather startling- optimized for efficiency and speed, she was a sight to behold.

She liked the attention.

She picked up an energon ration from the dispenser and turned back around- and smiled when every head was turned toward her, only to immediately look away, embarrassed.

She stifled her pride, unfitting of the cool demeanor of a well known assassin she had nurtured, and made her way to a table in the back, sitting quietly and leaning forward as she nursed her ration.

They were being more subtle now, staring at the infiltration expert they had all heard dozens of stories about, tiny and dangerous, sitting in their midst, but no matter how subtle they thought they were being, she was a master of stealth, and their glances did not escape her notice.

She grinned into her energon, pleased.

* * *

"Yeah! And then she comes  _flying_  over the cliff and for a second, I thought she must have been a Decepticon flight unit- and I still haven't even figured out how she got  _up_  there! But so, she comes flying over the cliff, right? And she  _slams_  into the back of this Decepticon with  _both pedes_  and jams her arm blade into his helm, and  _then-_ "

"And  _then_ , you started  _cheering_  and attracted the rest of his unit."

Both mechs turned to look behind them, startled by her sudden and silent approach. The blue mech with the horns who had been telling the story looked like he might curl up into subspace and vanish, but the red one was laughing.

"I- uh- uh-  _Arcee_! Hey! Haha, hey- yeah- actually- I mean-" He stuttered, but she smiled warmly up at him.

"Don't sweat it, soldier. I  _did_  save your aft back there, if you wanna brag about needing the assist, I'm not going to stop you."

The red mech laughed harder. The blue one looked embarrassed and rubbed the back of his helm self consciously with a shrug.

"What can I say. Your performance really deserved an audience!"

She frowned, "What's your designation, soldier?"

He brightened immediately, "Tailgate. Sir."

* * *

She flattened her wings against her back and upped her sensor's sensitivity a few notches higher, entering the mess hall with the air of someone who should not be acknowledged.

The entire room fell from a dull roar to an immediate hush, then picked back up again with fervent whispers.

She took an energon cube from the ration dispenser with servos she hoped were not shaking, and moved to an empty table in the back.

"Hey, Arcee," said a mech at a nearby table, "I heard about Tailgate, and I just wanted to say-"

She slammed her cube down and cut him a glare. His faceplate snapped shut and he moved back in his seat.

"Wanted to say  _what_?" She hissed, and he looked around uncertainly, but the room was silent, all eyes on them.

"I- um- just wanted to offer, my- my condolences- I've lost partners, too, and-"

"And you think that I  _care_  that I lost a partner?!" She cried, shoving her chair back to approach him, wings fluttering, agitated, behind her. His optics widened, and she continued, "I've lost  _units_  before, soldier. I've killed more Decepticon officers with my bare servos than there are half-trained scabs in this  _room,_ " she snarled, and immediately, the room felt colder, but she couldn't stop herself, "I have watched the spark leave a mech's eyes more times than you've piddled your armour, which I'm guessing is a  _lot._  Tailgate was  _one_  mech. He is and  _was_  just another number. He didn't mean  _anything_  to me."

The mech looked like he would rather be offline than here right now. Her chest heaved, venting heavily, and she grabbed her mostly untouched cube from the table, accidentally knocking it over in the process, before stomping out of the room, pedes clicking heavily with the floor against the dead silence.

He had been a statistic. They all were.

* * *

"Hey, Arcee, nice job on that last mission! Those specs you got are gonna win us back Altihex, I can feel it!"

She turned around sharply as the red mech came stomping down the corridor after her, his voice echoing from the titanium walls in a way that grated on her audio sensors.

"You will address me as  _sir_ , soldier. I outrank you."

He didn't look cowed at all, and if he heard her, he ignored her.

"Seriously, that mission was incredible. When you came running out of that Decepticon bunker I had no idea what to think!" He laughed, actually  _laughed_ , a huge booming noise that made her curl her lip plates in frustration, "I just got finished reading your mission report, and-"

"Quit laughing, Cliffjumper, this is a  _war_. There is no time for your- your-" she faltered, "your  _flattery._ "

He grinned at her, and gave her what she thought was supposed to be a playful punch in the arm, and before he could continue, she had hit him in the faceplate with a sharp right hook.

"Scrap!" He cried from the ground. She was immediately overwhelmed with guilt- it  _had_  been an accident, an immediate, unconscious reflex, but she was certainly not going to let him know that, and set her jaw hard.

"Don't touch a superior officer without permission," she hissed, straightening up.

He smiled, rubbing his jaw, and she frowned harder, "Yes,  _sir._ "

* * *

Jack leaned forward against her handlebars, "Come on, Arcee, let's up the speed! It's not like there's anyone else on the roads out here."

"Jack, we're on reconnaissance," she said, unable to hide the smile in her voice, even if her face wasn't visible, "We need to  _actually_  pay attention to what's around us. Remember?"

"Aw, come on, Arcee, are you even picking  _up_  any energon traces?"

She would have rolled her optics if she could, "Alright, hold on tight, then."

She hit the gas, and couldn't help but grin internally when he whooped in delight, the air streaming by them, cutting through the mid afternoon sun like warm butter.

* * *

"Sorry, Arcee, Jack is sick today, he's not up for any trips to Cybertron."

Arcee deflated, "Oh. What's wrong with him? Is it bad?"

"No, no, nothing like that," June said, stepping lightly up the stairs to the catwalk to get on eye level with her, "He's just got the flu. It's a human thing, it'll pass in a few days."

Arcee nodded, "Well, tell him I hope he gets better soon. He's leaving me with this lot for partners, and none of them have hands small enough to get the samples Ratchet keeps bugging me for."

June smiled, "No worries, Arcee, I'm sure he'll be back at least a day before I clear him for duty," she laughed, before sobering up, "Have you seen Rafael?"

Arcee blinked, "Raf? He's running some tests with Ratchet in the lab. Why?"

June bit her lip, "Has he told you he thinks he's moving to Cybertron?"

Arcee shrugged, "Yeah, so? He's certainly done enough for Cybertron that I really don't think it's my position to argue."

"Arcee, he's  _twelve,_ " June said.

"Well, actually, he's thirteen now," Arcee corrected, but June didn't looked amused.

"He's just a  _kid_ , Arcee. He doesn't belong on Cybertron, he belongs with his family."

"He doesn't really seem to want to go back to them, though."

"That's not really  _his decision._  On  _Earth,_ kids live with their parents until they're old enough to take care of themselves- he's just not old enough to do that yet."

"I promise you, June, we're perfectly capable of taking care of him."

June shook her head, "No, you're not, Arcee, you didn't even know what the  _flu_  was- what if he gets sick, or hurt, what will you do? Do any of you know anything about taking care of a human? Do you even know what we  _eat_?"

"It's not like Agent Fowler doesn't know, and most of that sort of thing falls under his jurisdiction-"

"Fowler  _knows_? And he hasn't  _stopped it?_ " June had gone from concerned to angry faster than Arcee could shutter her optics, and immediately she wanted nothing more than to get out of the room.

"Raf didn't really leave him a lot of choices, I mean, I think he hacked some kind of government thing and pronounced himself legally dead, I don't-"

"He did  _what_?!"

Just then, Raf poked his head around the corner on the other end of the catwalk, no doubt curious after having heard them talking about him.

"Look! There he is, why don't you go talk to him yourself?" She backed up and hurried out the closest entrance as soon as June's eyes were off of her.

* * *

When she entered the mess hall, no one looked up at her, but she gave the room a cursory scan anyway. Ratchet was sitting in the middle, scrolling through a datapad while Rafael practically stood on it, probably still going over the data Soundwave had provided. A table towards the front was still littered with empty containers, most likely Smokescreen's doing. Otherwise, she was alone. Considering Ratchet and Raf's intense focus on their project, it was probably as good as being alone. She took a ration from the dispenser and stood considering her seating options.

Soundwave walked past her to the energon dispenser and plucked a ration delicately from it, before retreating to the far side of the room and taking the back table. She nearly started when he breezed by her, totally silent and unannounced.

She watched him carefully, before sitting on the opposite end, alerts set to their highest level, but Soundwave did little but sip at the cube and stare into the distance.

She waited even after she'd finished her ration until he finished his, and rose from his table without ceremony, exiting the room without interacting with anyone.

* * *

Ratchet held Rafael away from the screen so he couldn't see it, and Arcee leaned forward to glance sideways at Bulkhead, who looked like he might purge.

"Nobody deserves that," he said quietly, and she looked back up at the image on screen of what was left of Breakdown's corpse, torn open in the cargo hold of the Nemesis, Silas inside, expired. The words "TERMINATED" blinked in red at the top of the entry.

Bulkhead turned away, gathering his bearings, but Smokescreen leaned forward, optics bulging, "Wow. I've never seen anybody that damaged before. Not even Optimus."

Ratchet twitched visibly, and Arcee cleared her throat. Smokescreen looked at her, confused for a moment, before she saw the realization dawn across his face and he leaned back, cowed.

"I have," She added quietly, "I've seen worse, too."

There was a noise behind her, the swish of the doors, and she turned.

Knockout was frozen just inside the room, optics locked on the screen, unmoving.

Almost immediately, he swung back to a casual stance, face settling into something friendly and unconcerned as he moved further into the room, but Arcee had seen it.

It had only been for a moment, but she had seen, in him, for just that moment, her, as she had been, after she had lost Tailgate. The rising panic he had shown for just a split second had been the exact same she had- something she had worked desperately to hide in ranks and power and isolation. The way he seemed to be trying to hide in good-mannered jokes that made everyone uncomfortable.

He grinned as he sidled up beside her to point at the image on screen, "I realize you like your humans, but I don't think anyone will disagree with me when I say he got what was coming to him."

She couldn't stop staring. No one else seemed to notice as Smokescreen vocally agreed with him, and Bulkhead disagreed and Ratchet nodded gravely.

Ratchet flipped through the entries, confirming Decepticon deaths. Knockout chimed in occasionally with commentary on his former comrades whom he didn't seem to care very much about, and Smokescreen asked question after question about their old battles.

They reached the end, and she squinted her optics, "Airachnid wasn't on that list."

Knockout tensed immediately beside her, servos clenching into fists. She chose to ignore this.

Ratchet brought up the list again, surveying it carefully, "She's not offline, then."

"There's no way," Knockout said quietly, and they all turned to look at him, "Soundwave engaged her after she killed Brea-" he paused, shuttering his optics, "After she killed  _Silas_. He came back alive, she  _has_  to be offline."

"He might have bridged her somewhere," Rafael piped up, gesturing to Ratchet to put him down on the databank, "He was doing that a lot towards the end."

He tapped at the screen, and Arcee stood terse and tense as she waited.

The search results popped up on screen, confirming Rafael's suspicions. She was online. Soundwave's report indicated he had sent her to one of Cybertron's dead moons, along with her Insecticon army.

She invented sharply, servos practically crushing themselves at her sides. Before she even could stop herself, she found herself looking at Knockout, who was looking at her.

From the moment he had joined their little family, she had despised and distrusted him. She'd seen the damage he'd caused and could not forgive him for it.

And in that moment, it melted away. His eyes darted to the screen, and she nodded. He did too, and the both turned away.

To the pits with Optimus' mercy policy. Cybertron was alive, and it wouldn't stand to have monsters that could shatter the peace around.

Optimus was dead. Airachnid would be, soon, too.

* * *

It was night when she woke up Rafael.

"Raf. We need a bridge."

"Huh? Get Ratchet to do it, humans need to sleep, Arcee," he said, rolling back over.

"Can't. He's recharging, and getting to recharge is a hassle enough as it is without interrupting him. It will only take a few kliks, you can go right back to bed when you're done, kiddo."

"Alright, alright," he said, kicking his legs over the side of his tiny berth and allowing her to pick him up.

Knockout was already waiting, tensely, in the groundbridge room, when she arrived with Rafael, who seemed more and more uncomfortable with the situation with each passing moment.

"Where are you two going?" He asked, finally rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes and watching them with suspicion as she set him down on the bridge controls.

"These coordinates," Knockout said, pointing at the screen, "I've already put them in for you. We just need you to bridge us back when we're finished."

"What are you doing?" he asked, and she looked toward Knockout. The Decepticon should really be left in charge of the lying.

"We're-" Knockout started, then quite suddenly stopped, staring at Raf intently, before looking at her with a shrug. Arcee paused. Interesting.

"We're getting some samples for Ratchet," She said, turning back towards Raf, who didn't look convinced.

"At... 3am?" He asked, turning to check the time on the monitor.

"Yes," She said confidently. He looked at her for a moment before glancing at Knockout.

"Knockout?" he asked. There wasn't even anything tied to the way he said it. Knockout exvented and shuttered his optics, and she wondered if he was feeling guilty about lying. Strange behavior for a Decepticon.

"We're going to kill Airachnid," he said, stunning her into silence. She looked back at Raf dumbly, caught.

"What!?" Raf cried, and she went to shush him. Best not to rouse anyone out of recharge at this hour.

"Okay- okay- yes, we're going after Airachnid," She said, cutting Knockout a sharp look that he didn't react to, "She's still online. And if we leave her up there, she  _will_  come after us."

"She can't possibly have any way off of that moon!" He cried, and she tried again to shush him, but he wouldn't be shushed. This was quickly spiraling out of control

"She doesn't," Knockout said, and she nearly hit him. He was the single worst deceiver she had ever met, and she had had to deal with Bulkhead's poor excuses for white lies every time he complimented her low-grade brewing skills.

Raf looked sufficiently appalled, "You just want to... kill her to kill her?"

She exvented heavily, and was still whirling, trying to salvage the situation, when Knockout spoke up again, voice more serious than she'd ever heard from him.

"She killed Breakdown."

There was a long silence.

"She killed  _Tailgate_ ," She added, finally.

"She'll go offline on her own when she runs out of energon," Raf said.

"I can't go another second knowing she's still online," she said with a heavy exvent, "Rafael,  _please_ , activate the groundbridge."

"I thought the war was  _over_  Arcee. We're supposed to be the  _good_  guys."

"You never even  _saw_  the war, kid!" She startled even herself with her volume, "This is  _nothing_  compared to the things she did to us! Not even to the things  _I_  did to them! She  _deserves_  to die!"

Rafael looked frightened, and she realized that she was actually screaming. She hadn't lost her temper like that in a long time.

She straightened up, furrowing her brow, and looking back at Knockout, who was still and silent.

"Knockout, you're better than that," Rafael said, looking away from her, and she glared at him. What did  _he_  know? He should have sen enough of the medic's handiwork to know that even if he was helping them he was  _not_  a good person and he was  _not_  to be trusted or respected, "You said you wanted to be an Autobot. Autobots don't do this."

" _Autobots_  do what they  _have to,_  Rafael-" she said, and Knockout stepped past her, to the databank, and leaned down to pick up the human.

"I'm taking him back to his room. Go by yourself, if you still want to."

She gaped at him.

"Are you  _joking_? She  _killed_  your partner!  _Recently!_ "

Knockout paused by the door and looked back at her, "And killing her won't bring him back. Raf's right, she'll expire on her own. The war... the war is over," He said, and the doors clicked shut behind him.

She stood, baffled and uncertain, staring at the place he had vacated.


	8. Loss

**Loss**

The tiny red and white flier picked through the pile of rusted out chassises and severed limbs, occasionally plucking a part from the pile to toss it to the side. He practically buried his arms in it, up to the shoulder join, before a smile spread over his face, and he wrenched a white helm from the pile with a grunt, as it came out, ripping off of the cables and wires holding it in.

He rolled it over in his servos, optics wide and bright, before he whispered, "A medic class..."

He looked around him quickly, then turned the helm over and tore off the casing on the back of it, fingers fishing around it's electronic brain, dark and offline, before he pulled out a chip as delicately as he could.

It was only a little burnt, and mostly intact. He could pull a  _lot_  of information fromthis- if he could get it out. The Pile was a sort of attraction in Kaon- somewhere a lot of low class mechs came to get spare parts when they couldn't afford new ones. A sort of public secret.

He transformed his arm and slipped it into the wiring before snapping it back shut and glancing toward his pile- only to invent sharply. A large, maroon mech had crushed one of the t-cogs in his pile beneath his pede and was advancing on him.

"Nice work scoring that medic-class processor," The mech said, and Knockout shrunk back, against the pile, "But I'm afraid I can't let a first cycle scrap like you take something  _that_  valuable."

Knockout stared up at him, ventilations in overdrive. He had two options here. One, he give this mech the processor, and leave here with minor damage, but alive. Two, he refuse, this mech kills him and takes it anyway.

Or, three.

He dove into the corpses pile, servos yanking forward through arms and legs to pull himself in further as the mech behind him cried out sharply- the other mech may have been larger and stronger, but Knockout was smaller, faster, and far more cunning, and he easily pulled himself deep into the pile. He cringed at the feeling of cold energon leaking onto his paintjob and the rough scrape of metal no doubt shredding it to pieces. He would be  _lucky_  if he could buff this out.

He paused, cancelling his ventilations and turning his audio sensors to max. He could hear the mech tearing at the corpse pile from his right, so he angled himself left, as quietly as he could, and activated his engine.

Honestly, the entire thing had almost been worth it just to see the startled look on the mech's face when he came flying out of the pile in his alt mode- fliers were not seen very much so close to the pits, but it was practically a requirement for an engineer-class, and he spiraled up, out of the mech's reach, unable to resist one last taunt.

"I'm on my  _twelfth_  cycle, you oversized half-wit!" He called, bloated in his triumph, before spinning out over the tops of the haphazardly constructed buildings that made up lowest Kaon.

The processor would do for a day's spoils.

* * *

"Come on, KO, just one round."

"Absolutely not. Look at my finish, it's nearly flawless, I'm not ruining it by  _sparring_  with you."

Breakdown smiled deviously, before running one claw up Knockout's back, straight through the paint. Knockout actually  _shrieked_  and turned to leap on him, barely containing himself from doing so.

"Ha! See, now you've got to touch up later anyway. May as well come spar with me."

Knockout groaned, deep and loud and practically a snarl, "Good  _grief_ , Breakdown, if you were  _anyone_  else, I would  _dissect_  you."

"Ah, but here's the rub: I'm me. And if you were gonna do that you'da done it a long time ago. Grab your prod, you could use the practice."

He snorted, but obliged, "I'm a  _doctor_ ," he grumbled, stepping sideways around the medical berth and towards the door, "I hardly need  _combat_ _skills._ " _  
_

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Breakdown chided amiably, "What with all this talk of war and everything."

"Oh,  _please_ ," Knockout sighed, "They've been crying about war for  _centuries_. They're not going to  _actually_  revolt."

* * *

"Knockout!" The voice drew his optics upward, as he clung to the bottom of the lifter, servos desperate to hold on, but his own weight to great. Breakdown was above him, clinging to one of the footholds on the lifter. "Knockout, activate your fragging jets before you drop!"

Knockout's ventilations kicked into overdrive, panic rising in his throat, "I can't!"

"What the  _scrap_  do you  _mean_  you  _can't_?!" Breakdown screamed over the howl of wind as it flew by them. His servos trembled clinging to the lowest platform as he tried to pull himself forward, but the pressure of the wind was to great.

" _I took a land based alt mode_!"

Breakdown's optics widened in surprise.

His servos slipped, and it felt as if everything had fallen into slow motion with him. He was only a floor below the surface. He had been so close, but not close enough.

The pit had been for nothing. The pile had been for nothing. All the hunting and trading and manipulating had been for nothing. He could see it so clearly- in about six and a half seconds, he was going to hit the ground. If he angled the fall right, at these speeds, he'd only lose one arm, but he would doubtless suffer major tertiary and auxiliary line damage, if not sever the main on impact. He would go into immediate emergency stasis, if he survived the fall, and he would be lost, left behind Autobot enemy lines, and they would not leave him alive. He was a medic, but he was not a medic class mech and when they scanned him, they wouldn't see anything of value. They would crush him like they crushed everyone.

He was never going to see the surface.

Just in that moment, something slammed into him, heavy. The ground he expected to hit never came- though he was slammed into something, though it was far less jarring than he'd anticipated, and he went rolling into the debris, coughing, sputtering, looking wildly around in confusion.

Breakdown was struggling to his feet a few meters away, auxiliary armour plating undone on his legs, slipping and falling off in waves, but he was standing.

Breakdown had jumped off the lifter and grabbed him.

"Can you move?" Breakdown called, and Knockout nodded quickly, struggling to his pedes, "Good. Then  _run._ "

They did.

* * *

"I will say this, Breakdown, you've looked  _better._ " Breakdown grimaced, and Knockout raised an eyebrow, "Did it hurt?"

His remaining optic darted downward, "I- no. They... the humans. They turned off my pain receptors first." Knockout nodded slowly, but Breakdown continued, "They wanted me to watch."

Knockout cancelled a memory file prompt, the corpse pile in Kaon, the feeling of those cold parts pressing against his chassis.

"They wanted you to watch them pull you apart," he confirmed, mirthless.

Breakdown nodded with a swallow, "They pulled me  _apart_  Knockout. I've never even  _seen_  those parts of me before."

Knockout raised an eyebrow, "I have. I put them together."

Breakdown was not moved by the dry humour- something he usually enjoyed. Knockout frowned.

"They just... pulled everything apart."

"I need to repair you," Knockout said, and Breakdown's eye darted up to him.

"I... yeah. Of course you do," Breakdown said, moving toward the medical berth, but Knockout didn't miss the shake in his legs and the jitter in his servos, even if his friend refused to acknowledge it. "My pain receptors are still off, so," He said, and Knockout did not miss the lightest tremble in his voice. Anyone else would have, but Knockout knew him too well and for far too long to be deceived.

"Turn around," he said, pulling his tools out from their drawer.

"I said my pain receptors are already off," Breakdown furrowed his eyebrows downward, perplexed.

"I realize. I'm putting you into stasis until repairs are finished," Breakdown's optics widened in surprise, and Knockout plucked a scalpel from the pile, and moved to the medical access panel at the back of Breakdown's neck.

"What? You never do that," Breakdown said, and it was true. Knockout was a well known fan of having his patients awake for their procedures.

"Your injuries are extensive," He said plainly, knowing it was a lie, knowing Breakdown would know it was a lie. Breakdown nodded- the slightest indication of acknowledgement, but nothing tangible. It was unspoken that Megatron would not know about this.

Knockout flipped the panel open. Breakdown was the strongest mech he knew, outside of Megatron himself. A moment of weakness in countless millenia was excusable. That was, after all, what friends were for.

* * *

He leaned on the groundbridge controls with a smirk.

"Dreadwing! Looking a bit sticky there. Airachnid give you more trouble than you could handle?"

Dreadwing looked at him, tearing off a chunk of her webbing from between the rotors of his hip joint. He didn't appear amused, but, then again, he never appeared amused.

"Yes," He said simply, narrowing his eyes.

Knockout chuckled, "It was a good thing  _Breakdown_  was with you. Or else you might have come back somewhat less intact- if not more... sticky."

Dreadwing paused. Knockout cocked his head to the side, before looking back at the groundbridge expectantly.

Dreadwing stepped towards him, before pulling down the switch on the groundbridge controls. The lights dulled and receded, the quiet roar of the engine went quiet.

Knockout frowned, confused, but Dreadwing just stepped away, towards the corridor.

He looked at the groundbridge.

He looked at Dreadwing.

He looked back at the groundbridge.

Realization dawned over him, cold and wet, like ice in his fuel lines.

* * *

"Ah- what's that?"

"That?" Knockout looked up at the structure wryly, "It's the arena, actually. Or at least, it was."

Rafael tilted his head, "It doesn't really look like an arena."

"Well, not anymore, no. Megatron whipped it up into a sort of command center at the start of the war. I think he thought it would be ironic. It didn't last long, though, the location was very poor."

"So, we're going in there?"

Knockout shifted, "I am. There were quite a few datapackets stored there- even if only one are two are left, they're worth the trip we made down here. You're welcome to wait here, though, if you're afraid."

The alien snapped its head towards him. Knockout assumed it was frowning sharply, but he couldn't see its mouth through the respirator.

"Come on, I wanna get a look at those systems."

Knockout grinned. The alien had a bit more pluck than he remembered.

It took quite a bit of effort to get the doors open enough to enter- but he managed. The inside of the old facility was dark, and he had to online his headlights just to avoid stepping on the offline carcasses just inside the door. The human on his shoulder gulped, and the noise dimly registered as a fear sound, but it said nothing further, and Knockout made no comment on it.

He stepped into the center arena, and the automatic lights clicked on- surprising him. The power grid  _was_  still connected down here.

Corpses were still piled in corners, long, long dead, mostly rust now. The computer banks were in a holding cell on the other side of the arena, but his optics caught an entrance that perplexed him for some reason, he couldn't make his pedes move.

"Are you okay?" The alien asked him, and he wanted to respond with some snarky, witty quip, but found his vocalizer nonresponsive. He stared out the corridor, and realized the exit he was looking at was the one that led to his old medical bay.

He stepped forward.

"Detour," Knockout said, and moved down the corridor. It was strange how intact it was- it had remained a medical bay, even after the massive upheaval the arena had gone through.

His medical berth was even in the same spot.

He touched it gently, because it was the only thing in the room that looked the way he had left it.

"Where are we?" The alien asked.

"We're in my old stomping grounds," Knockout said, pulling his servos back, and setting the human down on the berth before shuffling to one of the cabinets, "I used to work here. I'm just getting some medical supplies that we can bring back with us."

"Did you do a lot of work here?" The alien bent down to inspect the material the berth was made of.

"I did  _indeed_ ," Knockout said, starting to feel somewhat better, "My table was the least expensive in the arena. I was very popular."

The alien stood back up, "Whoa, there were other medics here? And you worked all on your own?"

Knockout froze, then immediately began pulling at supplies with more ferver- most of it was useless, but there were absolutely still parts in a few pieces of equipment that could be reused or repaired.

"No. I had an assistant."

The alien's eyes widened. Ah. So, it  _was_  perceptive.

"Breakdown," it said quietly.

"Yes. Breakdown," he responded, before piling the equipment into a crate and heaving it up into his arms.

* * *

He stared at the ground. He was practically in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by piles of ancient rubbish.

But he remembered.

Thousands of years ago, he'd fallen here, and his friend had risked his spark to save him.

The scuff marks were gone, but his memory banks provided the proper coordinates, seared into his processor. He had been so certain he was going to die.

But he hadn't.

* * *

"What's that?"

"That, my friend, is a  _Cosmotron._ " Knockout said, tapping the diagram and setting it in front of the tiny human, who poured himself over it, eyes darting back and forth over all of the tiny details.

"What's  _that_?" The human said again, pointing at the diagram in his servos.

"Hah! What, done with the one I just gave you already?"

"Cursory examination! I'll go over them in more detail in a minute! What's it called, Knockout?" Rafael looked up at him with these pleading eyes, and he chuckled wryly, handing him the next one.

" _That_ , is called a  _locking chip..._ "

* * *

Knockout swished through the doors with the airy, commanding presence he'd finally been regaining after several long months of Autobot life- things were awkward, obviously, but thus far no one had tried to kill him, no one had exiled him, and no one seemed particularly keen to do so anytime soon, and despite himself, he was falling back into the swing of things.

The doors to the council chamber opened, and the first thing he noticed was the crowd. Smokescreen, Arcee, Bulkhead, Ratchet, and the human were all standing in a little semicircle around the databank. Curiously, he raised his optics to see what they were looking at.

He was greeted by the sight of Breakdown's fractured corpse, covered in rust and spilled energon, torn open, tertiary wires pouring out of him and the MECH human scum laying dead in what remained of his friend's spark chamber.

He wrenched the fear from his face as quickly as it had come, took the stab of agony in his spark and shoved it as deeply into the back of his processor as he could, and plastered a smile onto his faceplate, stepping forward next to the spy femme to join them.

"I realize you like your humans," he said, and winked at the one in the room, "but I don't think anyone will disagree with me when I say he got what was coming to him."

No one could possibly hear the tremble in his voicebox. No one could see the shake in his servos, because they were not there.

Millenia of dragging himself above the expectations of others and carefully priming his attitude to further himself as far as he could would not fail him now, now that he had essentially won.

He would not show weakness now, not here, not like this, not  _ever_.

Not even over Breakdown.

* * *

The femme slid into the room, carrying the human delicately in her tiny servos. He knew he looked and felt tense, but this was, in all likelihood, going to be the end of his good graces with the Autobots. Even if they both made it back alive, there was no way the other Autobots would forgive him for intentionally endangering them all. A lot of things could go wrong- Airachnid could slip through the bridge while it was open, could kill them both and leave Cybertron two mechs down- two mechs they could not spare, there could be Insecticons whose energon stores could still be thrumming in their lines- and while Arcee would be forgiven, he would not be.

But vengeance would be worth it.

"Where are you two going?" it asked as Arcee set it down on the console.

He pointed at the screen, and the location he had already logged, "These coordinates, I've already put them in for you. We just need you to bridge us back when we're finished." A reasonable request. The human didn't look quite satisfied though.

"What are you doing?" He didn't fail to catch the Autobot's eyes on him, prompting him to answer.

Of course she was. She expected him to be a good liar. She expected him to take responsibility for this thing they were doing, even though they were doing it together. He looked back at the human.

"We're-" he started confidently, and quite suddenly, found himself unable to finish. The human's eyes were on him. He realized abruptly that this was the only living thing he'd actively spoken to in the last century that hadn't tried to kill him. He also realized that the human was looking at him because he expected him to be honest. It occurred to him how strange that was. From the time he'd been a sparkling, he'd been considered a liar by default- all class-changers were. He was unaccustomed to having honesty expected of him.

He looked back at Arcee and shrugged.  _You do it._

She didn't look happy that he'd upset her little script, "We're getting some samples for Ratchet," she said, a natural.

"At... 3am?"

"Yes," the Autobot answered, quickly.

The human looked at him. His servos twitched at his sides, and he wasn't sure what to do for a moment.

"Knockout?" The voice was tiny, and he thought about Breakdown's tiny voice, long before the war, before his reformatting. He exvented slowly, shuttering his optics and clearing the memory files.

"We're going to kill Airachnid," he said, finally.

* * *

"Is she going to...?"

Rafael looked up at him from his servos, concern etched across his features.

"No, probably not," Knockout said, letting the humor creep back into his voice, "She's most likely been cowed out of the whole thing. I suspect she won't be keen on talking about it later, either."

"No, probably not..." he trailed off, and Knockout opened the door to the human's room.

It was such an odd thing, to think of a Cybertronian sized room belonging to such a small creature. Everything he owned was in a corner near the door, and the majority of the space was empty. It was somewhat unsettling. He set him down on the floor.

"I'm sorry," he said, "About Breakdown."

Knockout sighed, "What was the word you keep using? For your little... units?"

Rafael looked confused, before perking up suddenly, "Family?"

"...He was that," he relented, finally, before rising and turning out the door.

* * *

It had been months since he had been welcomed back to the surface, but never did he fail to appreciate the sunlight shining on the metal of the ground. It glinted and glimmered in ways that offset his finish marvelously.

The location was appropriately distant, far from the more settled parts of Cybertron, which didn't surprise him.

"So, Soundwave, Tyger Pax? Really?"

Soundwave did not turn to look at him.

"You always did have a penchant for the dramatics."

Soundwave did not budge. Knockout sat down beside him.

"This is where we lost the Allspark, wasn't it? I wasn't here for that."

Soundwave nodded slightly.

"The war took a lot from us."

They sat in silence for awhile, watching the setting sun on the horizon, reds and oranges blinking off of the shattered wreckage of what remained of the city.

"She's going to find her way off of that rock eventually."

Soundwave nodded.

"We can't leave her there."

Soundwave nodded.

"I know you didn't know Breakdown very well- and I realize we haven't  _exactly_  always been on great terms-"

Soundwave's visor activated, playing an audiobyte, " _The only honourable option, would be to show him mercy._ "

He smirked, despite himself, "She did try to kill Megatron, too, you know. Quite nearly did. Look, I've got no intention of feeding you any of that 'The War is Over' drivel, because it's not, not for you. We both know you're still just following Megatron's orders, or you would have exterminated me the minute I arrived."

Soundwave nodded.

"Let me just put it like this, then. I'll owe you one."

Soundwave looked at him for a moment, but Knockout had turned away to look at the sunset. The crimsons at the edge of the broken skyline beside the deep navy blues of the darkening sky were eerily familiar, and he felt a tugging at his spark.

Eventually, Soundwave nodded, then stood, before activating the groundbridge controls on his wrist, and stepping through. The swirling green energy vanished quickly behind him, and Knockout was left alone with his thoughts.


	9. Law

**Law**

"Orion, I need you to file these reports."

"Are they a priority?"

"No, they're death certificates."

Orion Pax grimaced, and Ratchet sighed.

"Oh, how... um... unpleasant," Pax said after a pause, and Ratchet raised an eyebrow.

"It happens. It, in fact, happens quite frequently in hospitals. In any case, just have them in the system by the end of the day."

"I can do that," Pax smiled, and took the datapad from the medic-in-training, who shrugged.

"Yes, I'm certain you can. You're very good at handling data," He frowned, and belatedly wondered if the clerk would even pick up on the dry mirth in his voice- he was a bit dense.

To his chagrine, it seemed he had not, because Pax was grinning pleasantly in a way that suggested he believed he was legitimately being praised. Ratchet's mouth settled into a line.

"I was wondering if you wanted to come by the Hall of Records some time," Pax said, "You know, actually see it. You said you'd never been."

"Pffhah. Me? No, no. I'm far to busy with medical training. You know, the single most difficult mech class on Cybertron?""

Pax frowned, "Surely, you can take a solar cycle off. It's not like you even need to leave Iacon."

"I cannot," he said tightly, disapprovingly. Pax was so obnoxious. He visited rather often, retrieving the new material for the Iacon Hall of Records- running errands and things. For a surface dweller, he was rather lowly ranked. Far lower than him- medics were one of the highest classes one could be born as. It was a difficult class to be- and required very strict base attributes, which was why one  _had_  to be born one to do it. The lower classes were known to occasionally do minor class changes- from miner to dock worker, from janitor to teller, things like that, but there was no other class that could become a medic. It was innate.

And it made him important.

"How about an hour, then?"

Ratchet rolled his optics with a sigh, "Very well. But I expect those documents in the system before noon, then."

* * *

"I've actually been speaking to Megatronus, and-"

"What, the  _gladiator_?" Ratchet asked, baffled, nearly spitting out the energon he'd been drinking. Orion shot him a disapproving look.

"Yes, the  _ex_ -gladiator, and he had some good points, actually."

"Pff, what good points could he  _possibly_  have made? He was built for  _mining._  What could he know?"

Orion frowned, "That whoever classed him didn't know him- I think he's right- I think it  _is_  wrong to class mechs at birth. We don't know what they could become, given the freedom to choose on their own."

Ratchet snorted and leaned back in his chair. The café continued around them, a light buzz of activity offsetting the conversation.

"And if they've been classed improperly, they're free to reclass later once they've earned enough to afford it. They need  _something_  to start with- or else how would they survive? How would they afford energon or repairs without work?" Ratchet scoffed.

"We could set up a system-"

Ratchet laughed again, "Hah! And pay them to just exist? What about mechs like me who were born to do just the one job? Look at me, Orion, I was  _made_  to be a medic. It's all I can be!"

Orion put his cube down, "And mechs like you should be free to choose to do what you are best at, as well, but I do not believe that means that we should be denying that choice to, say, a clerk."

Ratchet's chair dropped with a clack from under him as the weight of the word hit him.

"Orion, I didn't mean-"

"Yes, Ratchet, you did."

He put down his cube and leaned forward, cowed.

"...I  _am_  sorry."

There was a long pause, until Orion finally picked his cube back up, and Ratchet felt he was allowed to speak again.

"What would you have rather been? Instead of a clerk?"

Orion finished his drink with a sigh, "That's just it. I do not know. I have never really had the opportunity to consider it seriously- it's not even that I dislike being a clerk, or dislike my life in general. But it feels... cheapened, that it was chosen for me." He looked towards the window.

Ratchet swished the energon remaining in his cube back and forth, thoughtfully, "You probably would have made a good politician," he said finally, and Orion nearly toppled over laughing.

"You are  _kind of_  an aft sometimes, did you know that?" Orion said finally, the smile returning to his faceplate. Unexpectedly, Ratchet felt a warm wave of relief crest over his spark. He hadn't realized until he had insulted him how much he legitimately appreciated Orion Pax's friendship.

* * *

"My..." He said, voicebox failing him. Ori- Optimus Prime was standing in front of him, and by the All Spark, he was different. he hadn't even  _recognized_  him initially. He had  _shaken his servo_  and  _asked his name_. He stared at his own servo in wonder. A servo that had  _touched_ a  _Prime_. His voicebox still would not obey him, and he rebooted it hastily, "My, uh... my Prime. It's an honour," he said finally, and Optimus Prime frowned down at him.

Good grief- he was tall. So much taller now. Ratchet had once, recently, even, been able to stand eye to eye with him, but now the Prime towered over him. Appropriate, since his status towered above him, as well.

"What?" The Prime said, voice dripping confusion. Ratchet considered bowing, but there really wasn't room in the cramped barracks.

"My Prime. I beg your forgiveness, I hadn't meant to-"

"Don't... call me that," Optimus Prime said, slowly, and Ratchet finally met his optics, confused.

"But, you are."

The Prime looked down at him, and Ratchet didn't know what to say. He had known Orion for so long now- all through medical instruction, and beyond, when he was employed with the highest of regards in Iacon- he had gone to  _cafés with him_ , he had sent him  _data to process_. Oh, by the AllSpark, he had given him  _directions_. Practically  _orders._ Oh  _Primus._

The urge to bow was rising heavily in his chassis and he wondered if his fans were going to kick on, as the panic was starting to heat up his engines.

"I was your friend, first."

Ratchet nearly burst, "But you're a  _Prime!_ "

Optimus Prime laid a servo on his shoulder pad-  _oh Primus oh Primus_  he was touching him, he was  _touching_  him, a Prime was practically a  _deity_ , he had no excuse for sullying his servos on a regular mech like him, this was totally inexcusable, he was encroaching on the Prime's presence by just  _being_  here and he needed to  _leave-_

"I  _am_  your  _friend_ , first, you absolute  _aft,_ " Optimus Prime said firmly.

It took Ratchet several moments to process this. This was not how Primes spoke. This was not how Primes acted. His insides twisted and he wondered if he would purge. Oh, please, by the All Spark, this was bad enough without  _purging on the Prime-_  and there it went. He lost total control of his fuel lines and doubled over to empty himself of his energon reserves.

There was a  _very_  long moment of silence, interrupted by the occasional burst of weaponry far above them, rumbling the floor, until the Prime chuckled-  _Oh Primus, can they do that? Are they ALLOWED to laugh?_

"Now, that's more like it," he said finally, even as he flicked the half processed energon off of his servos. Ratchet gasped and his knees buckled. He looked up at Optimus pitifully from the floor.

"But you're a  _Prime,_ " Ratchet said.

Optimus smiled, "And we choose our destinies, friend. Megatron might be mad, but he was right about the one thing," he said, offering a servo to Ratchet who oggled it in horror and contemplation, "freedom of choice is the right of  _all_  sentient life. And I still choose your friendship, Matrix or no Matrix."

* * *

"We'll go to north- that's the best route," Optimus said, and Ratchet scoffed. Optimus raised an eyebrow and everyone else at the table gasped in horror. Ratchet grimaced.

"Optimus, with all due respect, that might give us a  _few_  extra seconds headstart, but if we go north, we won't be able to retreat. The east is safer- at least we'll be able to drag the wounded out once the firing is done. A few more might die in the field, but  _far_  less will die in the medical bay." _  
_

The entire table stared at him, optics wide and terrified. A few turned to glance back at Optimus, who was considering the proposal.

"A valid point. To the east, then."

The table turned to gape at Ratchet, who returned smugly to repairing the Prime's shoulder armour.

* * *

"I can't- I can't-  _FRAG_ , I NEED MORE ENERGON OVER HERE-" Ratchet yelled, gesturing towards the closest assistant desperately as he physically held the scout's lower jaw in place, energon weeping from the gashes in it freely. By the All Spark, he was going to lose this one. This  _sparkling_  had been captured by  _Megatron_  and he was going to die because he happened to get injured on Ratchet's shift. He needed to weld this jaw  _shut_  or it wasn't going to stop leaking in time to fix the ruptures- there wasn't enough energon to replace what he was losing- oh  _Primus,_  he was going to take this kid's  _face_  from him- _  
_

He fired up the welder and jammed the flame intothe scout's lower jaw, ignoring the sinking feeling in his spark. If he'd had better tools, better training, more time, he wouldn't need to make the injury _worse_  to fix it.

* * *

He couldn't even stand.

His pedes had finally crumpled under his weight, exhausted. He was running on too little energon, too little recharge. Too little everything. He was slumped against the far wall, watching the blinking lights of the monitors over a dozen medical berths go in and out of focus as he ventilated heavily. He was  _so_  tired, so low on energy, but there was so much left to do. So many wounded. He couldn't rest yet.

"Ratchet?" A voice called from the dark room, and he looked up blearily.

"Eh? Orion?"

"Sort of," someone said as he was lifted to his feet. He stumbled, regained composure, slumped into their arms.

"Ah... sorry, Optimus," He said after a moment, "I'm just... so... tired. I forgot."

"I know you did," Optimus said, shifting himself under Ratchet's arm to help him stand, "Let's get you back to your bunk. You are in dire need of a serious recharge."

"No... no!" He said suddenly, pushing himself away and stumbling back, "Look- look, I have to... I have to work. I have to work."

Optimus shook his head, "No, you  _need_  to  _rest,_ " Optimus paused, and frowned, "Come on. That's an order."

Ratchet blinked sleepily, and sighed, "Yes, sir."

* * *

The base was entirely silent. Arcee was out, understandably upset.

Far too understandably.

They had all lost in the war. Arcee had, indeed, lost much, but she could by no means claim she had lost the most. They all knew about Bulkhead's past as a Wrecker- and the well earned reputation the Wreckers had for going through mechs faster than they could get new ones. They all knew about Bumblebee's personal sacrifices- Ratchet knew about them  _especially_  well.

By the pits, even  _Cliffjumper himself_  had lost so much- Ratchet couldn't even continue the thought. The grief choked him, dark and cold, making his throat feel dry as he bent over the computer banks. It was the middle of the day- usually the height of activity at the Autobot earth base, but not today. Today there was only silence, and him, tapping,  _uselessly_ at his databank, trying to do  _something_  productive, knowing there was nothing he could do.

Cliffjumper was  _dead_. He crumpled, head down, against the computer. He would never let anyone see his grief, but he was alone.

They were  _all_ so alone, on this Primus-forsaken rock.

* * *

The human wasn't moving. It wasn't moving.  _It wasn't moving._

He ran through calculations desperately, tore things from bins, hoping against hope that within the piles of Autobot medical supplies he would find something that could actually help an injured human. But he knew there wasn't.

Was it even breathing? Oh Primus, was it breathing?

The other two kept bending over it, trying to encourage it to move or breathe or open its optics or  _something,_ ANYTHING.

He threw his equipment to the floor, yelling with frustration, "My tools are  _all wrong!_ "

Bee slammed his fist into the wall with a scream of frustration and it crumpled beneath him. It wasn't  _fair_. They had all lost so  _fragging_  much in the war, why was it that they had to  _constantly_  continue  _losing?!_  It was like everything was some sort of sick joke, designed to slowly break them down.

The human was losing colour fast, and Ratchet didn't even need a cursory internet search to know that meant imminent death. The human was going to join the list of hundreds of others he had failed to save because of his own stupid, selfish pride.

"Rafael..." He hissed between grit denta, crushing whatever crumpled, useless tool was in his servo.

* * *

"Um..." Rafael's eyes were narrowed in focus, his tiny brow furrowed, his entire body hunched over the screen in concentration, "'Eastern forces were- side... sidetracked in Iacon- and- and- moved sou-  _west_ ward, when the- the... the... the ship... hit?"

"The  _blast_  hit," Ratchet corrected, and Rafael frowned.

"The  _blast_  hit, before... dispatching?" Ratchet nodded, "dispatching a unit to the... to the south."

Ratchet smiled, "Yes! Excellent! You're actually doing quite well, you know."

Rafael sighed, leaning back. He looked  _tired,_  "It doesn't feel like I'm doing well."

"You can already read basic mission reports. You have only been studying Cybertronian for  _six weeks_ , Rafael," he chuckled, and Rafael raised an eyebrow at him, "I actually wasn't certain a human  _could_  read Cybertronian. It's such a complex language. But hey! What do I know. If you can understand  _Bumblebee,_  why  _not_  read Cybertronian?"

Rafael grinned, before leaning back over the computer and continuing.

* * *

"In order to protect both the All Spark, and secure Unicron's defeat, it was necessary for me to empty the vessel's contents."

Optimus stood above them, powerful, commanding. Like a true Prime.

"Into where?" Bumblebee prompted, confused as the rest of them. Optimus' boundless creativity in battle had won them many a victory- but none so total as this. Ratchet beamed up at his old friend with pride- this was it. One final speech of victory and the war was over. It was all  _over_. They could just go back to Cybertron. Rebuild. Spend the next few thousand years the way they used to- simple, casual, easy. Bountiful synth-en, no more battles. No more proximity alarms in the night, no more desperate energon races.

The end of a war he had forgotten could end.

"The Matrix of Leadership."

His energon ran cold.

"As such, my own spark can no longer be separated from the multitude of others within me," Optimus continued.

There would be no casual, quiet millenia of peace.

"Are you telling us... that you are now...  _one_  with the All Spark?" Ratchet heard himself say, optics blurring, processor burning desperately. He couldn't possibly be saying what he thought he was saying. He must have misinterpreted. He would laugh like he did when he was Orion, he would smile and chuckle in that reserved way Ratchet had hated and he would say it was a joke. Actually, the All Spark was in some other magical vessel he had located on the way here. Everything was fine. He was fine.

"That's what you say when someone kicks... the..." Smokescreen said, going from his usual laughter to a steady trickle of syllables as horror and realization spread across his faceplate.

"To not return the All Spark to the Well would be to prevent future generations of new life from existing on Cybertron."

_no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no_

"My quest... must be completed."

_NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO_

"Optimus- I didn't return to save a life, only to lose the one I care most about!" He cried, desperate.  _Listen to reason, you old fool!_

Bulkhead placed a servo on his back in a way Ratchet suspected he thought was reassuring, "Ratchet's restored  _planets-_ he'll find a way to save you!"

"We can turn to Vector Sigma-" Arcee blurted distantly- or nearby? His head was starting to swim- "just like we did before!"

"Because the Matrix must now be relinquished with the All Spark, it  _cannot_  be restored," Optimus continued, ignoring them  _no no NO NO NO_ , "or passed down to another," his knee joints felt weak, "but while this may very well mark the  _end_  of the age of Primes," his servos were shaking, "leadership can be earned, with or without the Matrix," and his  _spark_  hurt, "and in my view, you have  _each_  acted as a Prime."

He didn't hear anything after that. He didn't need to. His entire chassis hurt with the realization. The speech continued without him as his processor burned into overdrive, trying to make this situation  _okay_  somehow- Optimus' wings unfolded and his ventilations hitched. This was happening.  _This was happening._

Optimus took off.

His legs were locked, frozen, unable to look away. It was like staring into the sun. His optics burned and his spark burned and his energon thrummed powerfully through his lines and his processor was hot and everything was  _wrong wrong wrong_  but it wouldn't  _stop_ -

Optimus turned downward, and Ratchet took a picture.

And then he was gone.

And Ratchet was alone.

* * *

"He has to go back to his family, Ratchet."

Ratchet set his mouth hard in a line.

"Absolutely not."

"Ratchet! You  _know_  he belongs with his family!"

" _Not_  unless he wants to go back!" Ratchet said, gesturing at the boy animatedly. June folded her arms.

"He doesn't  _know_  what he wants, Ratchet, he is  _twelve_."

"And on  _my_  planet," Ratchet grumbled, "he would have been living and working on his own long ago."

"He's not from  _your planet_  Ratchet! What part of that aren't you understanding?"

"I will  _not_  send him back to those people if he does not wish to be with them any longer."

June looked furious. Rafael just looked down.

"I'm taking him," She said, finally, quietly. Immediately, without even thinking about it, he slammed a servo between them. Her eyes widened in surprise.

"Just  _try_  it," he said, startled by the dangerous tone of his own voice. For a moment, the stubbornness left her and she looked at him in a way she never had before.

She was afraid.

He pulled his servo back quickly, but it didn't change her eyes.

"I'm telling Agent Fowler, and he'll tell you that this is wrong," she said, moving away, but she made no motion to take Rafael with her. The boy shuffled closer to him, watching her go.

"He's an Autobot now!" Ratchet called after her, though she didn't turn, "I will not surrender an Autobot! Not ever!"

The doors shut behind her, and he looked down at Raf, who was hiding his eyes in his sleeve.

* * *

"Hey, Raf, you wanna go for a dri-"

"He's busy," Ratchet said, cutting Bumblebee off. Bee looked startled, and even Raf did.

"I am?"

"Yes. We still need to..." Ratchet paused and glanced around the room, "You haven't studied your Cybertonian yet today. If you don't every day, you'll lose the little you've learned."

Bee frowned, confused, and turned to Rafael, who shrugged.

"Um, later, then, I guess."

* * *

"You can  _not_  build that."

"Please, sir!" The Vehicon labourer said, standing in the center of the council chamber. Bulkhead slammed a fist into the table.

"No!"

"We'll build it somewhere  _outside_  of Kaon!"

"No!"

"We are happy to participate in the restoration of Cybertron, but we will  _not_  pretend we were never Decepticons!"

" _Why_  do you want to build it?" Bee asked, and ignored the look Bulkhead shot him.

"Because he was the only one who even knew our names! And Megatron never let us mourn!"

There was a long silence, and all eyes went to Bulkhead.

"I don't-"

"Do  _YOU_  even know my name?" The Vehicon cried suddenly, and Bulkhead sat up. Ratchet raised an eyebrow.  _He_  didn't know the Vehicon's name. It hadn't said it when it had entered, trailing the crowd behind it.

Ratchet sighed. Frankly, he didn't really care if the Vehicons wanted to build a statue of a dead Decepticon. He just wanted the memorial for Optimus completed.

"What do you think?" He mumbled quietly to the human standing on the table in front of him.

"They're Autobots now," Raf sighed after a moment, "We do something similar on Earth. We make these rocks to put on graves so we have somewhere to go to mourn somebody we've lost."

"Everyone has the right to mourn..." Ratchet sighed, and the Rafael nodded. The boy was exceptional at playing grown up and pretending he wasn't uncomfortable with the situation or the attention- if he hadn't known him so well he might have thought he was almost bored.

"I'll support the motion," he called, loud enough for Bulkhead to hear. The Wrecker looked almost angry at first, before he relented.

"Fine. Fine. Whatever. Just don't build it in Kaon. I can't live here if I have to look a Breakdown statue in the eye every morning."

The Vehicon bowed. "Thank you, sir. We won't."

And with that, they were gone.

* * *

Rafael sneezed.

Ratchet turned immediately, "Are you alright?" Concern was heavy in his voice- perhaps heavier than was really called for over a little sneeze.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just a-" he sneezed again, "Just a cold, pro'lly," he finished, holding his elbow over the respirator before looking at it in confusion. "Eugh. Gross. I can't even wipe my nose."

Ratchet frowned.

"Don't worry, it's probably nothing," Raf said with a sniffle, turning back to the data they were going over.

The next day he was stomping through the groundbridge, sneezing up a storm, on his way back to earth and an atmosphere he didn't need a respirator to breathe in.

"I'll go with you," Ratchet had said, but Raf had shaken his head.

"No way, we're like, almost done with those calculations. Besides, Knockout wanted me to get him into a drive in, anyway," Rafael had told him.

"Knockout?!" He had cried, flabbergasted, "You must be joking. He's as irresponsible as they come!"

"Well, maybe" Raf had laughed, "but then, it's better to have him out of your hair! I'll see you in a day or two."

And with that, he'd one.

Ratchet had spent the first two hours pacing. He didn't like how quiet his lab was in the boy's absence. He did not like how, when he was not around, thoughts he did not want to think were creeping into his processor.

He began researching the human illness "A Cold."

* * *

The monument itself was beautiful. It was very accurate- they Vehicons had used his old medical blueprints to model it.

The colours were even right.

He only looked at it a few moments before he realized that he was not able to look at it any longer. He was certain he would to go into an involuntary offline if he spent another second here. He turned and left immediately.

* * *

Silence.

Rafael out with Bee. Again.

Ratchet's servos twitched over the databank. He couldn't focus. He couldn't work. He  _needed_  him here. He couldn't keep his mind straight. He couldn't stop thinking about Optimus.

Optimus, Optimus, Optimus.

* * *

"Where'd Soundwave go?" Rafael asked.

Ratchet looked up from his datapad. The boy was sitting in front of his laptop, but he was closing it.

"No idea. Hopefully, off planet."

The boy frowned.

"Do you think he went after Megatron?"

Ratchet grimaced, "By the All Spark, I hope not."

Rafael leaned forward and hugged his knees. Ratchet raised an eyebrow. The past few days the boy had seemed rather distant and distracted, spending more time out racing with Bee than chattering away in his lab, but Ratchet didn't know why. It seemed he was reaching a precipice.

"What's wrong?"

"The other night..." he trailed off quietly, before looking up, "Don't tell Arcee I told you."

Ratchet's optics widened, "What happened?"

He hugged his knees tighter, "She came and got me in the middle of the night to work the groundbridge. She said she needed samples, but Knockout said she was lying- they were going to kill Airachnid."

" _What_?!" Ratchet cried, dropping his datapad on the table.

"They didn't go!" He said hurriedly, standing up, still so small, "I just- Knockout changed his mind at the last minute and nothing happened, but- I just-"

"Urggh... I can not  _believe_  Arcee would do something so irresponsible. And to get  _you_  involved in her  _blood quest!_ "

"Ratchet, you can't tell her I told you. She would  _kill_  me."

Ratchet shook his head firmly, "No, no,  _no_ , this has to be addressed. There is  _no way-_ "

Just then, a swirling green vortex ripped a hole in space on the opposite side of the lab.

Before either of them could react, Soundwave stepped out of the portal, limping on a leg that had had it's entire plating torn off, and carrying one of his arms. Ratchet gaped as the faceless transformer stepped past him, energon pouring from a dozen wounds onto the floor. He stepped up to the main databank in the lab and activated it with an input cable. _  
_

"Wha-" Ratchet started belatedly, unable to even rise or react other than to stare dumbly as Soundwave opened the log files, accessed Airachnid's, and changed the status at the top to "TERMINATED."

He then turned to Ratchet and placed his arm on the table.

Ratchet leaped to his pedes, startled.

"By the  _All Spark,_  what have you been  _doing_?!" _  
_

The mech gestured to the screen, 'TERMINATED' still blinking red at the top, then at his arm.

"I- I- oh  _Primus_ , get on the table, we have to stop the leaking-"

* * *

He had the ex-Decepticon hooked up to an energon recycler while he worked on repairing the arm. It was a very specific model, and Ratchet was not certain he could replace it. The arm itself was heavily injured- it needed welding, replacement parts, new wiring- several day's repair at best.

As much as he hated to leave Rafael's company, some of the repairs required massive heat and radiation, and he didn't want the boy anywhere near either of those things. He'd insisted on keeping the patient company, and against his better judgement, he'd left him with him.

Ratchet hung around the corner, watching them, still holding the joint he had just completed repairs on.

"And then, my mom says, 'I'm sorry, I forgot.' Even though I'm soaking wet and it's  _still_  raining and Pilar is sitting in the front seat making these faces at me- I dunno. It was dumb, I guess. I shouldn't have been out so late."

Soundwave played one of his error noises, and Ratchet frowned.

"I mean, maybe not. I don't know. She was just so busy. I just can't believe she forgot me. I waited out there for two whole hours. What was your family like?"

Ratchet barely contained a snort. Cybertronians did not have families. Well, not until recently. He paused. Rafael knew that.

Soundwave played an audiobyte.

"' _I love you, Soundwave,_ '" it played. The recording was  _ancient_ \- he could barely understand it beneath the popping and static. That recording had to be nearly as old as  _he_  was. It was difficult to think of someone ever saying that to the Decepticon.

"Do you miss them?" He peeked around the door just in time to see the Decepticon nod slightly. Ratchet pushed the door open and entered as if he had not just been eavesdropping.

He only felt a little bad.

* * *

"Ratchet, the US government has put up with a  _lot_  from you Autobots, but I  _draw the line_  at-"

"Without us, you would not  _have_  a "United States of America." Or a North America. Or an  _Earth._  It would be a cyberformed landmass controlled by  _Megatron_."

"Ratchet! You can  _not_  take him!"

Agent Fowler was not pleased.

"Oh, can't I? What are you going to do, come take him?"

"He's in your  _base_ , Ratchet, and  _yes_ , I can."

Ratchet sat up, "What?!"

"What, you think I don't keep tabs on you bots? Ratchet, come on, give me some credit."

"No, you give me back Rafael!"

"He's a  _child!_  We have laws!"

"Your  _laws_  made no move to protect him when he lived with his human family, they have no right to claim him now!"

"What?" Agent Fowler stopped in his tracks, looking perplexed. Ratchet was practically shaking, desperate.

Before Agent Fowler could continue the thought, Ratchet's comm beeped.

"Um... Ratchet? The human and I  _may_  have taken a brief trip to earth to see a film and- may or may not be being detained by more of them," Knockouts voice rose from the comm, wary.

"What? What are they doing?" He called back, watching Fowler on the screen from the corner of his optics.

"One says they are here for the kid. Listen, this is really not my area-"

"Ratchet?" Rafael's voice squeaked through the comm, "I don't want to go with them!"

"Do  _not_  give him to them!" Ratchet cried at Knockout, Rafael's tiny voice kicking his panic into overdrive in a way it had not been since they had ended the war. Fowler grimaced on screen and Ratchet practically  _snarled_  at him, "You  _cannot have him!_ "

"Ratchet, I am  _not_  giving you a choice here."

Ratchet leaned into his comm, and still staring Agent Fowler dead in the eye, said, "If they move on you, you are to treat them as hostiles."

"I don't know how Bumblebee would-"

"That is an  _order_ , Knockout!"

Agent Fowler's eyes widened, then narrowed, "Is this  _really_  how you want to play this, Ratchet?" _  
_

Before Ratchet could respond, his comm buzzed again.

"Knockout, I said-"

"Ratchet, I'm going with them." Rafael's tiny voice floated out of the comm, much closer. He was using his own wristcomm this time.

"What? No, you don't have t-"

"We just  _ended_  a war, Ratchet," his little voice sounded strained, "We  _can't_  start another one. Optimus... Optimus would tell me to go back."

The comm cut out and there was silence.

"They took him," Knockout said over the comm, finally.

Ratchet buried his head in his hands and wailed like a wounded animal.


	10. Spaghetti

**Spaghetti**

"Rafael, Tomas's game is running late tonight- we can pick you up some McDonald's on the way home, but it will be at least ten."

"That's alright, Mama, there's spaghetti in the cabinet."

"Is Mia home? Ask her to cook it for you."

"No, she went to her boyfriend's house."

"She did what! Oh, when I get through with her- Rafael, you're okay to cook it, right? You remember how to use the stove?"

"Yes, Mama."

"Good. We'll see you when we get home, sweetie. Finish your homework before dinner. No sweets!"

The line clicked off, and Rafael sighed.

He was really sick of spaghetti.

* * *

The volume was increasing. He knew he should really go to his room, but they wouldn't stop  _yelling_  and he didn't want to be out there. He hated it when they yelled. It was nights like this, huddled in the bathroom with the lights off, leaning against the door while his parents screamed at eachother outside that he desperately wished they would just get a divorce and get it over with. Anything would be better than this.

His stomach rumbled, wanting the dinner that this particular fight was over. No one wanted to cook tonight.  _Rafael_  just wanted to leave- but he didn't have anywhere else to go. He didn't have any friends nearby and he didn't have any friends his age  _at all_ , and his house was  _always_  crowded and there was nowhere else to be alone- and eventually someone was going to try to get in here. _  
_

For now though, he could sit in the dark and cover his ears and pretend someone else's family was screaming. Maybe on TV. But not here. Not his family.

* * *

" _Mama_ , I don't  _fit_  in these."

"Oh, hush, Rafael, you will grow into them. You're due for a growth spurt any time now! And I am not going to buy you a whole new wardrobe for you to grow out of inside of a year."

"All the other kids are going to make fun of me!"

"Don't worry about the other kids. You just worry about keeping those grades up. Hang out with the other honors kids, they'll be nice to you."

"There's only like three other honors kids and they're all older than me!"

"Rafael, just  _wear_ the clothes. It will be fine. They are nice clothes! Your brother wore them for years."

Raf held the sweater vest up against his chest, frowning how it fell down below his waist.

"Yes, Mama."

* * *

The passenger side door slid open and Bee gave an amiable chirp of whirrs bidding Rafael good morning as he climbed in the seat with a grin.

"Hey, Bee! What's up?"

"Nothin' much, buddy. Ratchet says that he's got another batch of synthetic energon to test tonight."

"Alright!" Rafael cried as Bee pulled away from the curb.

"Whoa, is that your sister?" he asked, slowing slightly and turning one of his rear mirrors, "Never seen her before."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, that's Pilar. She goes to a different school than I do."

"Oh yeah? Where does she go?" he said, rolling back to his usual speed.

"She's only a year older than me, so she's actually only in eighth grade. She goes to the middle school."

"Wait, aren't you in eleventh grade?"

Raf laughed, "Yeah, we actually call that being a "Junior." I skipped a couple of grades." He frowned, "She's always been kinda jealous."

Bee whirred low in consolation, "I'm sorry." There was a pause, "Who's taking her to school? That wasn't your parent's car."

"Huh? No, she carpools with a neighbor. Our parents go to work really early and don't have time to drive us."

"What, did you tell them I'm a neighbor?" Bee chuckled.

"I didn't tell them anything. They didn't ask."

* * *

More screaming. This time, specifically about him, and his dropping grades. Mom thought it was Dad's inattentive attitude that was to blame, Dad thought it was her coddling.

He'd moved from the door to the bathtub, hugging his backpack to his face, humming and trying to focus on the tune. The song petered out when they started talking about computer club. He's spending too much time hanging out in that club with his friends, Mom argued. It's a good club, Dad yelled back, it's good for him. It's making him lazy. No, it's keeping him on task. No, it's a distraction.

He shoved his face into the front of his backpack and moved his shoulders to cover his ears.

There wasn't even a real computer club.

* * *

No one listened.

No one ever listened.

His voice was too small, too irrelevant. No one cared what Rafael Jorge Gonzales Esquivel had to say.

Until Bumblebee.

Bee would listen to him for hours on end, talking about school- how hard gym class was, or how easy math was, or how he had gotten a B and was disappointed or an A he hadn't thought he should. He'd listen to him talking about video games or toy cars or movies or his parents or whatever stupid meaningless thing popped into his head.

It was unusual.

It was nice.

It was a feeling he clung to, desperate- no one ever spent so much time with him. Not at school, not at home. And he didn't know if he could go back to a world without him.

He didn't know how to handle a world where Megatron took his friend's brain and left him alone. It wasn't a world he wanted to live in. It wasn't a world he had intention of letting exist.

Even still reeling from the hardest thing that had ever hit him (but certainly not the first), bones aching and stomach protesting as it churned angrily inside him, head spinning from where he'd hit it when he flew back, he couldn't hesitate. Autobots never hesitated, and Autobots weren't afraid to put their lives on the line for the people they cared about. For their family.

He was definitely afraid, when he through himself on the cable linking his only real friend to Megatron, but he thought that if you pretended hard enough that you weren't, it was basically the same thing. Or at least, good enough.

* * *

"I'm dropping you off in the next city," Bee beeped after having driven in silence for nearly an hour.

" _What_?" Raf cried, finally looking up from his calculations. He had such limited data to work with trying to pinpoint the Harbringer- enough to find it, he thought, but it was taking some time and effort.

"Ratchet was right. We  _lost_ , and we-  _I_  can't get you killed out here- This  _isn't_  your war and-"

"Shut  _up_ , Bee," Rafael said, quietly, and the Autobot fell into a stunned silence. "You think it isn't  _my war_? How is it not  _my war_  when it's my friends who could die! My planet! I lost my  _home_  and my  _parents_ probably, too, already. I'm an  _Autobot_  and I- you can't- you can't make me leave," his voice was shaking, hands trembling against the top of his laptop he had snapped shut.

"Raf, I- I don't... I don't think I can keep you safe, anymore," Bee whirred, slowing to a crawl on the side of the road.

Raf jumped out before he had even come to a full stop.

The road was empty, they were far into the backwoods now, and with only a little trepidation Bee transformed.

"I am  _not_  going to let you go alone. This is my family. You have to let me protect my family, because- because- I  _can_ , Bee." He turned around, hands quivering, balled into fists as they were, "I know I can. I  _can_  do this."

Bee nodded.

* * *

The keys on the  _Harbringer_ 's main databank were larger than his entire forearm. He had to jump across the keyboard to reach all of the characters- it was making typing a slow process. It was also exhausting, and just typing a simple codestring was making him sweat.

It wasn't  _working_  though.

It was entirely frustrating because he could  _read_  ninety percent of this code near-fluently. His Cybertronian was actually getting really good, but he was unable to be proud of that seeing as the remaining ten percent was confounding him.

The groundbridge would not turn on.

He didn't need Ratchet's help. He didn't need anyone's help. He had been able to read computer script since he was three- he had skipped four grades and was still at the top of his class. He had hacked into government satellites and facilities and rescripted alien programs for  _Windows_ \- he  _could_  do this. He  _had_  to do this. He  _had_  to be enough, because he was all there was left.

His thoughts strayed to the bathroom door he would hide behind not so long ago, useless. But he was not useless here, and he was not useless now. Just like then, there was no one to protect him. No one to walk in and make everything better. He was  _going_  to make the groundbridge work and he was  _going_  to find the other Autobots and he was  _going_  to go back for Ratchet. He was  _not_  going to hide and he was  _not_  going to fail, because there were no other options.

His family was in danger.

* * *

It was, sitting on the top of the council chamber, watching a Cybertronian sunset, that Rafael realized he didn't miss his parents at all.

He had, of course, been aware for the past several months that he didn't miss them, but he had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. He had been waiting for the homesick nostalgia to kick in. For the regret. He was waiting to wake up and realized he'd make a mistake.

But it never happened.

All he could think was that it was quieter here. No one yelling at him about his grades or his honors work, no one telling him his 5.36 GPA was not good enough, no one telling him they were working late and to find a ride home from school.

He wondered if he should feel bad about that.

Mostly he just felt bad that he didn't feel bad.

* * *

"So, you know, I see these 'ghosts' in human films all the time, but I'm still not sure what they are. Do humans actually turn into ghosts when they die?"

Raf frowned, coughing into his sleeve, "Yeah, well, I dunno. I don't really think so. It's just something humans like to think about, I think."

Knockout raised an eyebrow, and looked back at the screen in the Autobot base. Raf was huddled in a pile of blankets on the old couch, still suffering under from a massive sinus headache and a constantly running nose. He also suspected he had a light fever.

"You know, Cybertronians  _always_  go back to All Spark when  _we_  die."

"Yeah, I know."

Knockout made a face, "And? What about humans?"

Raf frowned up at him, "Do you want me to turn it off?"

Knockout immediately shook his head, "Absolutely not. I want to know what happens to the dangerously irresponsible one."

"Doctor Venkman."

"Yes! That one."

Raf chuckled, before he lost the sound to another coughing fit, finishing with a violent sneeze. Knockout looked thoroughly disgusted by the display, and Raf reached for a tissue, "I really wouldn't have pegged you for a Ghostbusters fan."

"To be quite honest I'm rarely disappointed by human films. I may not be a fan of-" he paused, " _most_  of you, your entertainment is  _far_  better than anything we had back home. Ha! He got slimed. Disgusting."

Raf went for another tissue.

* * *

Cybertronian days were actually shorter than Earth days. Not by much- but enough to be troublesome. A Cybertronian day was somewhere in the vicinity of twenty hours, and Rafael's human brain schedule was having difficulty rerouting from it's standard twenty-four hour schedule. It meant there were a lot of late nights and early mornings, and a lot of inconsistent wake up times.

Luckily, the native Cybertronians needed less recharge time than human's did sleep, and he rarely found himself alone when he was unable to force himself to sleep in what were the Cybetronian wee hours.

On one such evening, he found himself riding with Bee. They had still been mapping the vastly different planet, after eons of tectonic shifting had severely altered the landscape. It was all digital, so it required little more effort than just driving around, and Rafael suspected Bee was just happy to have the company, since these mapping trips were usually solo, and rather dreary and uneventful.

He leaned out the window and let the wind blow his hair back.

"Hey, Bee, do you think these places, like, out here, will ever be populated again?"

"Yeah, of course they will. Maybe not for awhile though."

"Think I'll get to see it?"

"What? Yeah, of co- oh."

Raf turned back to glance inside the car, "Oh come on. I didn't mean it like that."

"Well... we put a beacon out. It won't be long before SOME parts of it are settled, I think. Depends on how many actually want to come back, and how many Decepticons out there still want to fight."

"I really hope I get to see it. A bright Cybertron sounds amazing."

"I wouldn't know- I never saw it before the war," he chuckled, "I'm actually as excited as you are, I guess."

* * *

He had actually forgotten how intimidating Soundwave was. He'd been missing for a few weeks now, and it had ebbed from his mind, but was back in full force, now. The ex-Decepticon was huge and dark and always looked at everything so coldly with such carefully calculated movements.

Today he mostly just looked tired.

Stuck in a medical berth hooked up to an Energon recycler he was far less intimidating than usual, but hadn't quite lost his commanding air. In the several months since he'd been released from the holding bay and walking around idly on Cybertron like a disillusioned puppy, he'd made no attempt to attack anyone or, really, do much of anything but take his energon rations.

Until yesterday, of course.

They'd cleaned off all of the energon and replaced the plating on his leg, but one arm was still floating in an energon bath in the corner, waiting for the completion of several key parts.

Ratchet was currently out of the room tampering with a joint engine who's inner mechanisms he had described to Rafael in great detail. Since he would not be present to complete the needed repairs in person, due to the radiation dangers.

So he was keeping Soundwave company.

"I wanna... thank you. For Airachnid. I was worried about Knockout," Rafael said as the door clicked closed behind Ratchet.

Soundwave did not respond.

"Is she really... dead?"

Soundwave's visor lit up with a fairly gruesome video clip of what remained of the Decepticon rogue. Rafael swallowed heavily. It was hard to look at, but he had seen a lot over the past year, and he didn't want to let it show. His screen clicked back off.

"Definitely dead, then. Alright."

Soundwave nodded.

"Can I ask you something?"

Soundwave made no acknowledgement of the question, so he continued.

"Why are you still on Cybertron? Why not just leave?"

Soundwave looked at him, before pausing.

His visor lit up, and showed a search for energon signals. He fullscreened a map showing the surrounding planets. Cybertron pulsed on his visor, bright, while the other planets were dark and dim. It expanded, once, twice, three times, showing a dozen dark planets.

"Cybertron is the only place left with energon?"

Soundwave nodded.

"We could give you the synthentic energon formula."

His screen lit up again, this time a search for populated planets nearby. The same dimness with Cybertron, a pulsing beacon, in the center.

"Oh. You don't want to be alone."

Soundwave turned away.

* * *

"Bee told me about the file you sent."

Soundwave did not respond.

"I just wanted to say that it must have really sucked to live on a planet without a concept of family."

Soundwave looked at him. Rafael was actually surprised by this, he'd taken to mostly rambling when Ratchet was out of the room, idly studying his Cybertronian and bothering the medical bay's resident houseguest, who very rarely seemed to acknowledge him.

"I left my family back on Earth."

Soundwave tilted his head at him, which was practically  _startling_. Rafael raised an eyebrow and closed his laptop.

"They were always busy, and I had a lot of brothers and sisters. I wasn't exactly they're favourite, either," he laughed, and looked back at Soundwave, half expecting him to have looked away by now, but he hadn't, "They fought a lot. Mostly about my siblings. Pilar was always getting into trouble, and Marco was getting caught up with some really bad people... they were always really busy thinking about them, I guess, and kinda forgot about me most days," he said, putting his laptop down beside him and drawing his legs up against his chest.

Soundwave continued to stare.

"So when you guys blew up Jasper-" Rafael thought, only for a second, and was nearly certain he'd imagined it, that Soundwave winced, "it actually turned out that they didn't know I made it out. So I just... didn't go back."

Soundwave nodded after a long pause, before his screen came online with a question mark.

Rafael's eyes widened.

"What, you actually want me to keep going?"

Soundwave nodded.

* * *

He didn't really want to get out of the van.

He had realized part of the way through the trip why the van itself felt so uncomfortable. It had been almost a year since he had actually had to ride in a car that wasn't alive, and he really didn't feel safe in a vehicle that wasn't piloting itself anymore. Also, it smelled too much like new car (not like Bee, who smelled like energon and outside, or Ratchet who smelled like grease and metal, or even Knockout, who always smelled like polish and those pine-scented air fresheners he kept making Raf buy him) and he was uncomfortable in it.

But if he got out of the van, that meant he had to deal with his parents again, who were standing outside the van and looking at the door expectantly.

Finally, reluctantly, he slid out the side door, keeping his eyes on the ground. They rushed him immediately, crying out and telling him how much they loved him, even as they jostled eachother to stay in the center of his attention.

He stubbornly refused to look up at them, even going so far as to cast an icy look back at Agent Fowler, still standing by the van, even as they fawned over him, telling him how glad they were he was alive, how they'd make his favourite for dinner, how  _much_  they had missed him.

* * *

Spaghetti.


	11. Time

**Time**

The policeman were very polite. The tallest one had shaken his hand, and the shorter one had caught his mother when she stumbled and fell as they were talking. Words floated out of them that he didn't really understand- the way they said "accident" didn't really make sense when they said it after "motorcycle." What kind of accident could his dad have had with a motorcycle? Did he accidentally steal one? Is that why the police where here?

He kept tugging on the hem of her dress and asking what the policemen meant, unable to understand why she kept crying instead of answering him.

* * *

His mother had long ago stopped asking if Jack had made any friends that day. He would always deflect the question, saying things like, there was a new Japanese exchange student in his class, and she seemed nice, or he had spoken to the twelve year old 'child prodigy' who sat in the back row that the other boys his age liked to pick on that day. She would smile, and say she had been so lucky to have had a son as nice as him, and he would laugh and make a joke about what a jerk he actually was because he never did his own laundry, and they would go back to quietly eating lasagna.

He didn't have a lot of time to act his age. He had  _way_  too much to do to worry about things like making friends, or clubs, or sports, or anything boys his age were supposed to care about. He had to grow up, and he had to do it as  _quickly as possible._ His schedule was way too busy trying to keep his grades up high enough to qualify for some kind of scholarship (because paychecks from the KO Burger weren't going to pay for that), and working to help his struggling mother keep food on the table.  _  
_

He knew it, and she knew it, so she had stopped asking.

* * *

"Arcee- I'm  _really_  sorry for your loss."

He didn't even know how to tell her how sorry he was. Loss was hard. He had been so, so young, when his father had- but he remembered, remembered well enough, and even if he didn't remember  _him_ , he remembered the long nights he would huddle beneath his blankets in the dark, counting backwards from one hundred and pretending the crying he heard distantly from the other side of the house was the tv and not his mother. He remembered the polite smiles his mother would give his teachers when they asked about his father and say her husband had left them. He remembered the wake of his father and everything he left behind, and that loss resonated with him, and he was so,  _so_  sorry that she had to go through that spiraling cycle of loss and grief and pretending it was fine like he had.

"What could you  _possibly_  know about  _loss_?" She hissed back at him, and immediately, the warm hurt of empathy in him went cold.

"What, you think you're the  _only one_  with problems?" He yelled back. How dare she. How  _dare_  she.

"I'm not sure  _girl trouble_  counts," she spat back, transforming, his condolences rejected, his empathy denied.

His loss overlooked.

"I'm pretty sure my  _girl trouble_  started the night I met you," he said, turning down his eyes and folding his arms.

Fine.

She could stay alone in her grief, if she wanted to. One more secret, one more polite white lie.

* * *

It was almost ironic, what grief could do to people.

It had made him harder. He had assumed responsibility from a young age, he had learned when to tell teachers everything was fine at home, and when to turn down things he wanted because he knew he couldn't keep them. He had learned how to be comfortable in a silent household, late at night while his mother worked the late shift. He had learned the route from school to his house when he was ten and how long it would take to make the trip by bike, and how much he could carry without losing his balance.

Arcee, it seemed, had been molded by her grief into something colder, something panickier. Something that stayed locked up in layers of metal armour and a distant attitude until fear dragged her from her walls, screaming and hyperventilating, falling into PTSD induced delusions that crippled her and left her hugging her arms, kneeling in the dirt.

He wondered if this was how his mother had felt the first time she saw him on a motorcycle.

* * *

He leaned against the barn wall, and thought better of it when it squealed in protest beneath his weight, leaning back up away from it to hunch over the bag of fast food in his lap. A few yards away, Arcee was shifting her arms between her regular and assault modes, stretching the sore gears, all locked up from hours of vehicle mode travelling.

"Arcee, how many more miles?"

She looked back at him over one shoulder, "Four... five hundred."

He sighed and bit into his cheeseburger.

"You don't... have to come with me, if you want to stay," she said, so quietly he almost missed it, and he jerked up immediately with a frown.

"What? Are you joking? I left my mom back in Jasper. This is personal."

She turned back around, dropping her arms back into their regular mode with a click, "Are you sure? This isn't your war, and-"

" _And_  Megatron is trying to destroy  _my planet_ , too, so yeah, it totally is  _my war_ ," he said, dropping his burger down into the paper. She shifted uneasily with a shrug, "And that's that. Come on, let's finish up here so we can get back on the road," he said, tearing back into the burger with more gusto.

* * *

"What do you mean you're staying here? You can't  _stay_ here."

"Why not?"

Jack was at a loss for words.

"Be- because, I mean, you just  _can't_. You're  _twelve_ , Raf."

Raf shook his head, but didn't look up from his laptop.

"Raf, seriously. We'll call your parents and I'm sure they'll be really excited to see you."

"I don't care how excited they are," Raf said, finally looking up at him, "I don't ever wanna see them again."

It was mystifying. Jack had been so desperate to get back to his mother, he couldn't even process the idea that Raf might  _not_  want to get back to his parents.

Both of them.

"How could you  _not_  want to see them again?! They're your  _parents_ , and they're probably terrified wondering what happened to yo-"

"They know what happened to me."

Jack paused, "What?"

"Or at least, they think they do."

"Kinda vague, but alright."

Raf looked back at his computer, typed something rapidly, before turning the screen towards him and opening an email. It was an invitation to a funeral. Rafael Jorge Gonzales Esquivel's funeral. Dead at age twelve. Service at 6, refreshments provided.

He stalled, unable to formulate a response. Memories flooding in, the tiny black suit he'd worn, the way everyone had looked down at him with pity while he stood stone faced by his mother. He shook them away.

"Then they'll just be  _twice_  as happy to see you, when they find out you're actually alive."

"I don't... want them to know I'm alive, though."

Jack shook his head. That was wrong. This was wrong. He'd talk to his mother. She'd know what to say to him.

* * *

He didn't know how he felt about all the dinners his mother was having with Agent Fowler. He didn't like how she talked about him when she was home, and he didn't like how she was using the word 'we' so much lately.

Of course, he loved the spring that had returned to her step. He liked how much more she was smiling, lately. There were a lot of things he liked.

So he pretended to like the things he didn't, just like he pretended his dad had left them, and how he pretended that didn't bother him, and how he pretended to be responsible and brave when he so often felt terrified and small.

* * *

He didn't miss his job at the KO Burger. No matter how difficult his job with Unit: E was, it was way more satisfying than sitting at a window and taking orders all day. Though he did sit by a lot of windows, and he did take a lot of orders.

On the bright side, Raf's completed respirator let him spend a lot more time with Arcee. More time on Cybertron, scouting, doing recon- hell, just more spending time with the first real friend he had ever made. More time with his partner.

Less time dealing with all the paperwork and the debriefings and the endless meetings training new soldiers in Cybertronian habits and how to go about not offending anybody.

* * *

"I'm not going to do that."

"Jack, you  _know_  he belongs on Earth, with his family."

"He probably does," Jack said, crossing his arms, "But I am  _not_  going to  _kidnap_  him. There is  _no way_  you're going to convince me to do that."

"Jack, that's an  _order_."

"Agent Fowler, I respect your authority on this, but I can  _promise_  you if you tell me to do this one more time, I will  _resign._  He's not going to come back willingly, and I'm  _not_  going to drag my friend back here if he doesn't want to go. You'll either have to convince him, or go to war with the Autobots. Because we both know that the way Ratchet is right now, you  _will_  have a war on your hands. And I will  _not_  fight them."

Agent Fowler narrowed his eyes, mouth set in a hard line.

"We can't just let them do whatever they want. He is a human child and they  _have_  to respect our laws."

"Not my problem," Jack said, after a tense moment, spinning on his heels and turning away.

"Jack! Do  _not_  walk out of here!"

"I quit," he said, slipping his respirator from around his neck onto his face and turning on his comm, "Arcee. Lock onto my coordinates. I need a bridge."

There were a lot of things he would do for his frankly unique position. Kidnapping Rafael, who had, in his own defense, done his part in saving the Earth, who was his  _friend_ , was not one of them. Getting to piss off the guy dating his Mom was just the cherry on top.

* * *

He was offered his job back within forty-eight hours, the Rafael issue, dropped. Job security was probably the most amazing feeling in the universe. He'd become so integral to dealing with the Autobots at this point Unit: E didn't even know how to function without him.

It was definitely good to be him today.

* * *

Late nights on the road in Cybertron, cataloging new locations and old ones, taking photos of bombed out buildings and samples of odd metal alloys poking out of the ground like the planet's own bones. It was always in old battlefields, the wind whistling through the fractured buildings and toppled structures, stars blinking coldly down at them, that Arcee would stop, staring off at some spot and something he couldn't see or understand, lost to the present, back in the war. It was always those dark nights that he had to drop his maps and datapads and bring her back, whether it be with a gentle nudge or grabbing her, screaming,  _stop shooting it's just us_ , but she always stopped.

The war was only technically over.

* * *

"You did  _what_?"

"I sent him home. You  _know_  it was the right thing to do."

"You took his  _wrist comm_?" _  
_

" _And_  moved his family into witness protection. Because  _you_  and  _he_  and  _they_  pushed me into it!"

Jack didn't even flinch when Agent Fowler slammed his hands into the table.

"We have laws for a reason, Jack, and you know that! His parents want him  _safe_ , and so do  _I._ And so did  _you_! What happened to that?"

"You can't just  _take him away_  from the Autobots! That's the only thing he even  _cares_  about!"

"It's too late, Jack. You aren't cleared to know his location, either, so don't let me catch you trying to find it."

He ripped his ID card from his inside coat pocket and threw it down on the table, "Scrap this. I won't be a part of what you've done, Fowler."

"We both know you're don't want to quit, Jack. Look, I talked to your mother, and even  _she_  thinks tha-"

"Don't talk about my  _mother_!" He heard himself yell, "You barely even know her!"

Fowler's eyes softened and he leaned back, off the table, "Jack, I know this has been hard for you, bu-"

Jack practically punched his wrist comm on. "Arcee. Groundbridge. Now."

* * *

He didn't go back to  _back_  to Unit: E, but he did keep working  _with_  them. More of as a freelancer than anything. The pay was better, anyway, now that he was setting his own prices. He would however, miss the odd, confused "sir"s he had been getting from startled non-comms when he stood beside Arcee.

Miko hadn't been happy with him leaving, even if she never told him to come back. She was far too attached to her armour and how involved it let her be in the raids on Cybertron when some lost Decepticon patroller would come back confused, thinking the war was still on. And he wasn't about to ask her to drop her Wrecker status.

Dealing with Raf's absence was far more trouble than he had anticipated. Ratchet was practically catatonic, running the groundbridge mostly in silence and continuing to pump out cure after cure for human illnesses. Unit: E was more than happy with itself about  _those_  results, another thing Jack resented them for. Knockout had been entirely different- he'd been starting to actually warm up to the humans, but it seemed that taking Raf had also taken any trust he'd had towards their species, and he refused to talk to any of them, though he was spending a lot more time with Soundwave than Jack really felt was safe.

* * *

"Knockout, what are you doing?"

Knockout did not acknowledge him.

"Knockout, what  _are_  you doing?" Arcee repeated beside him.

"I'm groundbridging out to Soundwave's location. He had an altercation with some rogues in Altihex, and he needs a patch job."

"Oh come on, seriously?" Jack lamented, but if Knockout heard him, he didn't act like it.

"What, and he called you instead of Ratchet?" She said, folding her arms.

Knockout pulled down the controls and the groundbridge fired to life.

"Ha, what, are you joking? He hasn't left the base in  _weeks_. I'm perfectly capable of treating his injuries. Do me a favour and turn that off behind me, won't you?" he purred, stepping through. _  
_

"I can't believe he's still not talking to me," Jack sighed as Knockout disappeared into the portal.

Arcee shrugged, "Yeah, well, that's what we get for pardoning their war crimes," she said, pulling the groundbridge control back up as it fizzled out, "Disrespect."

* * *

Soundwave himself didn't seem to really care. He just kept wandering around Kaon, being moderately useful in directing the Vehicons and dealing with the occasional raids. Mostly, he did whatever he wanted, and the only person who's presence he seemed to tolerate was Knockout, and even that was only for repairs.

He would vanish for weeks, and even once, months, on end only to reappear looking for energon rations like nothing had happened.

* * *

"Soundwave?" Jack said, hesitant. The faceless mech was finishing an energon cube in the mess-hall-turned-cafeteria, his drone fluttering on the table. He'd noticed that Lazerbeak had been disconnected a lot, lately. Soundwave did not acknowledge him but for a slight tilt of his head.

"What's up with Lazerbeak, anyway?" Jack asked, tired of wondering, "Why's she been out so much lately?"

The drone fluttered again, and Soundwave actually reached up one long arm to touch it on the back. It went still.

Soundwave's visor lit up with an audiobyte. "Family," it said, in Raf's voice.

* * *

Bee had taken it  _very_  poorly. It was actually probably for the best Jack had left Unit: E when he had, since Bumblebee was refusing to cooperate with the US government any longer. The only thing they were getting was the cures Ratchet kept making, and Jack suspected that was more for Ratchet's benefit than humanity's. No more tech, or weapons, or assistance really of any kind. Jack was fairly certain he and Miko were the only humans who were even  _allowed_  on Cybertron anymore, though no one had explicitly said so.

* * *

"You can't be  _serious_."

"Dead serious, Fowler."

Fowler's image flickered on screen, "You're telling me to recall  _all_  my men? After everything I've done for you?"

"You  _kidnapped_  an Autobot. As far as I'm concerned, this alliance is over," Bee said, standing up straighter. Jack bit his lip. This conversation was getting worse and worse.

"He's not a ' _Bot,_  he's a  _human child_. On our planet, sending a  _child_  back to his  _family_  is not  _kidnapping._  What  _you_  were doing was kidnapping."

" _We_  were and  _are_  his family," Bee said sharply, and cut the comm. Jack raised his eyebrows.

"Little bit intense," he commented, sitting on the databank. Arcee nodded.

"Well. He knows how to fix this," Bee said after a moment, before turning away.

"Do you think he'll back down?" Arcee asked him.

He thought back to Fowler's face, telling him to go to Cybertron and retrieve Raf.

"No."

* * *

Apparently his abrupt departure from Unit: E, and, consequently, home, since he  _had_  turned eighteen three months ago, hadn't stopped his mother from pursuing his ex-employer, either, and that was absolutely something he wanted to avoid as much as possible, though he knew it made her sad. He hated how sad it made her, but some days he couldn't bring himself to deal with that, either.

* * *

"Jack, please come home."

"I can't, Mom," he said, leaning against the door and gesturing to Arcee to wait, as he turned the volume down on his phone and stepped away.

"Jack, I- you know I miss you. I'm sorry about what happened with Raf, but-"

"It's not about  _him_ , Mom- I mean, that's part of it, but-" he paused, and took a deep breath, "I just need to be myself for awhile. Fly free and all that."

"I... if that's what you want, Jack, I can't stop you... I just... you know I'll always be here, if you want to come home, right?"

"Yeah. Sure, Mom. I gotta go. We're running recon today."

"I- of course. Will you... maybe... call me, later?"

He glanced at Arcee, "No reception on Cybertron. Sorry. I'll call you next time I'm on Earth, though."

He hung up before she could respond.

* * *

It was actually a quiet night, walking through the ground control room, Ratchet hunched over his research as he always was, ever present but never really there ("He just needs a few more vorns to get over it," Arcee had said, "Grief takes time, and our lifespans give us a lot of that."), when the main commline beeped.

"Ratchet?" Jack's head immediately went up, looking at the main databank, confused by the unfamiliar voice that had risen out of it. That wasn't Miko's voice. It wasn't anyone he knew from Unit: E who had enough clearance to have the direct commline- and he wasn't sure how many people on earth even knew Ratchet's  _name_. Had they  _seriously_  added someone  _new_  to the Autobot taskforce on Earth  _without_  his training? That was some kind of sick joke. There was no way.

"I need a bridge," the unfamiliar voice said, and Ratchet leaned into the comm.

"Identify yourself," he said, and even now, even after over a year of this, the flatness in his voice didn't fail to make Jack's heart flip in sympathy. Grief brought out the worst in people.

"What, you don't recognize my voice? I guess it probably  _has_  changed some, but I wouldn't have thought  _that_  much. Here, let me do yours instead." The voice cleared it's throat and dropped lower into what was definitely a very poor imitation of Ratchet's voice, "Ep, ep, ep!  _Rafael,_  I needed that!"

Ratchet froze, before he jumped out of his chair so fast he sent it crashing over behind him, "Rafael!?"

Jack went slackjawed.

"How about that bridge?"

Ratchet was tripping over his syllables, scrambling as he typed into his keypad with a sort of desperate fervor Jack hadn't seen in him at all in the last four and a half years.

The spacebridge flared to life, green and bright and loud, a direct contrast to the human who stepped through it. He wasn't exactly small- at least, not anymore. Not like he had been the last time Jack had seen him, a gangly thirteen year old in far too large clothes standing beside creatures thirty times his height. He'd apparently finally had that growth spurt- He was, if Jack recalled, closing in on his fifteenth birthday and was at least a head taller than the last time they'd met.

"Arcee, get back to base, you  _have_  to see this," he said into his wrist comm, looking back up at his friend and his modge-podged homemade respirator, waving at him excitedly with blue-black bruises blossoming across his face.


	12. Better

**Better**

Wednesdays were inspection days.

It meant you had to wear your uniform all day, and you had to look perfect in case someone ranked above you saw you. He usually skipped lunch on Wednesdays to avoid the risk of messing up his jacket.

The shoes were the worst, though. You couldn't just shine them before the inspection; they had to look good all day. It meant having to shine and reshine them between nearly every class and it meant upperclassmen were always laughing snidely to themselves in the hallways before they were kicking at your feet and scuffing them on purpose.

It was still better than being in the group home.

ROTC had been significantly more difficult than Bill had been expecting, but at the end of the day, it meant another two hours he was out and not at the group home, and it meant he knew he had somewhere to go when he turned eighteen and the group home wasn't an option anymore.

So he shined his shoes for what felt like the five hundredth time before lunch and kept his jacket straight when the officers walked by.

* * *

She had been beautiful.

Her hair was long, and she always kept it pulled back in microbraids. It was a rare day to catch her wearing something that wasn't green- her favourite colour. He had been at the group home since he was ten- something they liked to remind him was unusual, and often- but she'd only been there a year. She wouldn't say what had happened to her family and she wouldn't say where she had come from or why, but she was beautiful and she smiled at him and Bill had asked her to marry him a week before they graduated.

She had said yes.

It shouldn't have surprised him when she vanished three months later. He just came home one day and all her things were missing, bed neatly folded, drawers all put back into their places. No note. Just gone.

But it did.

* * *

The desert was awful. It was hot and it was dry and the lingering fear of death was always tugging at the back of his mind. His helmet was an uncomfortable reminder of the constant threat of danger, even in the quiet moments.

But it was better than the group home.

* * *

They were huge.

He was fairly certain the blue and red ones hands were twice his entire height, and even the smallest one, the blue and grey one, looked like she could probably pick him up and toss him a few hundred miles.

"Lieutenant Colonel Fowler," the red one- Optimus Prime, the briefing packet had told him- said, "It is a pleasure to meet you."

Its voice was deep and booming and echoed off the steel walls and his bones. They had told him they were big, they had told him they were loud, they had told him they were giant sentient transforming robots from space, but for for the sake of all that is good and free he had not been entirely prepared to meet giant sentient transforming robots from space. He certainly hadn't been prepared for how  _polite_  they would be.

"The pleasure is all mine," he said, feeling increasingly awkward, "I'm here to oversee your transfer to the missile silo in Nevada," he paused, "but you already knew that."

Optimus Prime nodded gravely.

* * *

"Heeey, Fowler!" Cliffjumper's booming voice could probably be heard outside the bunker, reinforced though it was. Agent Fowler nodded towards him, straightening the collar of his jacket absently.

"Cliffjumper. Seen Prime? We picked up some readings that might be energon, wanted to run it by your people."

Cliffjumper straightened up, looking pleasantly surprised, "Oh, yeah? That's great! He's in recharge right now, want me to pull him out?"

"No, don't wake him up. I'll talk to Ratchet. Where's he at?"

The alien medic peaked around the computer banks to glare at him with the steady unease he had come to expect.

"Yes, Agent Fowler?" He said sourly, and Fowler couldn't help but smile.

"I think you'll be singing a different tune in a minute here, doctor. I've got some readings here that would blow the socks off of Nixon himself."

* * *

Everything hurt. From the forming burns he could feel, but not see, crisscrossing his midsection, and the soreness in his muscles, lingering long after they had stopped spasming.

Everything hurt, and the idiot just kept yelling " _Where is the Autobot's base?_ " As if that were a convincing interrogation tactic.

Starscream was such an amateur.

He was a ten story robot that turned into a jet and shot missiles from his arms, and he couldn't get more creative than "jab it with an electric prod and ask it again." He'd been through worse than this at the hands of  _human_  enemies.

Fowler had honestly expected better.

* * *

Everything was ruined.

From the wreckage that was, until recently, a sleepy town in Nevada to the chain of command he was going through trying to convince his own superiors not to start a total war with an advanced alien race who seemed mainly content to ignore them as long as they weren't being actively antagonized.

He was torn between the fear that the aliens he'd come to know and respect were all dead and shredded to a million metal pieces across the globe by now- along with the frightened children they'd managed to rope into danger with them, and the knowledge that in the bunker below him were hundreds of injured soldiers and a single civilian nurse trying to treat them all. She was brilliant and frankly rather creative with her treatment plans, but she was not a doctor, she was not enlisted, and she was not enough.

He sank his head into his hands.

He had no idea what to do.

* * *

She was crying.

He hadn't realized it at first- had been confused by her hunched silhouette, arms rubbing at her face silently. Surrounded by the countless troops in medical bunks, some crying out quietly in the dark, most just breathing loudly.  
But he was not confused anymore. She was crying.

"June?" He said, reaching out a hand toward her. She grabbed it, and pulled him closer, crumpling against his chest as she tried to stifle her sobbing and keep her voice down.

"He- he has to be okay- I need him to be okay-" she stammered, pressing her face against his chest. He put an arm around her awkwardly in a way he hoped was comforting. She went on like that for awhile, crying silently into his jacket in the dark.

They didn't talk about it later.

* * *

"I'm worried about Raf."

He looked up from his paperwork. She still looked tired, but she almost always looked tired. A single mother working as a nurse- it wasn't really surprising. Despite the bags under her eyes and the sag in her hands she held her shoulders up tight as always, something defiantly refusing to act as tired as she no doubt was.

"Ms. Darby, I realize that this is frustrating, but-"

"Bill, don't take that patronizing, government official tone with  _me_ ," she said sternly, and Fowler faltered, startled, before sighing.

"Honestly, June? Me, too. But I really don't know how to fix this."

"But isn't that your  _job_?" She said, frowning, "He's a child, he should be with his family."

Fowler nodded, leaning back, "I know he should. But he's got his family convinced that he's dead, and I for one am  _tentative_  to discredit the US government and admit a twelve year old managed to use out systems to fake his own death." June frowned harder, and he raised an eyebrow, "Plus, have you seen Ratchet lately? I'm almost worried he'd start a whole new war over the kid if we took him."

June surprised him by nodding in agreement, "I know what you mean. I was talking to him yesterday, and he- well, he scared me, honestly."

She looked down.

"I'll talk to Raf," Fowler said after a moment's consideration.

* * *

Fowler did not get a chance to talk to Raf.

He had, obviously, tried, but Ratchet was finished discussing the issue and had primly informed him Rafael was "out" and would be "out" whenever Fowler would be visiting from now one.

He was not happy with this development, but the old Autobot had stared him down terse and hard and he had backed down, to address the issue again later.

* * *

"I know you're upset, kid, but I promise you, this is all gonna work out in the end," he said, hoping his voice sounded reassuring.

Raf glared at him silently.

"When you're older, you'll thank me," he sighed, and shut the door of the van.

* * *

Dinner was awkward. It was hard to enjoy a meal when the discussion topic was the thirteen year old you had recently taken at gunpoint from the hands of aliens and put into witness protection in Florida.

June mostly just picked at her food, "Do you think we did the right thing?"

"He's with his family. I talked to them, and they know enough about the situation that... I feel like they get the general picture, anyway. I think we did the right thing."

She moved a pasta noodle to the other side of her plate, slowly.

"Jack doesn't seem to think so."

Fowler frowned, "He's only eighteen, June. He thinks he understands, but he doesn't. You know we did the right thing."

She pushed the noodle back to its original place.

* * *

Jack had been a better Agent than Fowler had honestly anticipated. He was good at following orders, he was good with the Autobots and with the soldiers. He was just innately good at his job- something that was rare in his line of work, and losing him was legitimately a strain he was already feeling in his department.

He found himself wondering if getting Raf back was even worth all the trouble he had gone through to make it happen- losing the Autobot's favour, Jack- the way June had stopped smiling after he'd left home.

Memories of the group home filtered in, nearly forgotten.

No, he had a family, and even if he didn't think he wanted to be a part of it, Rafael was twelve and he didn't, couldn't know what was best.

It was his job, not as an official of the US government, but as an adult to make sure he, a child, was safe. To give him the best he could offer. To make a bad situation better.

Besides, letting a grieving alien robot get his way all the time was not a responsible precedent to set.

* * *

He was doing boring, mindless paperwork when his phone rang.

Not his desk phone, his cell phone. The second one. There were less than ten people with that number, and he was expecting (or hoping for) calls from all of them. So he answered the phone perhaps somewhat more enthusiastically than he probably should have, as a respected government Agent.

"Hello?" he said.

"Fowler. I need you to do me favour."

"I told you, Jack," he said, trying not to let the sigh slip into his voice, "You're not one of ours anymore. No more favours."

"It's your lucky day," Jack said dryly form the other end, "I'll come back if you take care of this for me."

"What is it you need me to do?" Fowler asked. Getting Jack back had been a goal for awhile now- the department needed him, and they  _definitely_  needed his help getting the Autobots to get back on their side, and June could really use it.

"I'm sending you a photo, now."

His phone beeped, indicating the photo had been received. He pulled it away from his ear and clicked it open.

It was Rafael.

_Scrap._

He'd put the  _entire family_  in witness protection and had them ferried off to  _Florida_  and somehow,  _somehow_  they had still managed to  _find_  him.  _  
_

It was delayed, but that was when he noticed the bruising.

"What happened?" he heard himself ask, mentally chastising himself for addressing what was probably the least important thing on the table right now. These aliens had  _kidnapped_  a human American child  _again._ _  
_

"I don't know, Fowler, why don't you ask his p _arents_?"

He frowned.

"What are you saying?"

"Fowler, I think you know  _exactly_  what I'm saying. You took him from the Autobots, and you sent him back to his family, and they-" he voice faltered for a moment, " _hurt_  him. I told you  _not_  to take him, but you did it anyway, and  _this_  happened."

Fowler's mouth went dry, "Wait... can I talk to him?"

Jack laughed dryly, sardonically, "No. He won't come back to Earth for anything. He's taking his  _meals_  on Cybertron. No way I'm getting him to bridge down here so he can take a  _phone call."_

Fowler leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose, "...Shit."

"I've literally never heard you swear before."

He groaned, "Are you sure?"

"Last night, he called us on a scrapped together comm unit he  _mad_ _e_  and bridged in wearing a respirator he  _made_  dressed like he had run off  _weeks_  ago, and I can barely get him to talk about the last year at  _all_. He's not a liar, Fowler, and he's obviously been trying to get back home for  _awhile_  now." _  
_

He took a long, contemplative moment of silence. He had been wrong. Sending him back to his parents had been wrong. He would have been better off left alone. He had been _wrong._

"I'll... what was the favour you wanted?"

"I want you to leave him  _alone_ , Fowler. You can't possibly think sending him back is the right thing to do at this point. Bumblebee says he's willing to play ball again if you'll just drop it,  _and_  you get  _me_  back."

Jack had a point. He stood to gain quite a bit.

"I'll..." He said slowly, after a moment, swallowing, "I'll have custody transferred. Make him a ward of state, I guess."

"Thanks, Fowler." The line clicked off, and he sank his head back in his hands.

Being with his family hadn't been better.

* * *

"I need to talk to him. I have to do something about his siblings."

"Fowler, he isn't going to talk to you."

Fowler sighed, running a hand through his hair. Jack just ran his hands over his badge. He'd probably forgotten how heavy it was.

"I told him I wasn't going to send him back."

Jack put it in his inside coat pocket thoughtfully, "And you have practically destroyed his trust for the entire human race. You'll have to take care of it on your own. I would consider it a victory just to get him to come  _visit_  Earth inside of the next decade."

"I'll call the local child services, then." He paused, "I'm sorry, Jack."

Jack just nodded.


	13. Home

**Home**

Rafael moved past Ratchet with the grace he had come to expect- it had taken him a long time to accustom himself to the suit he'd eventually built, a bulky thing that stood a short five meters, oversized vents on the back compensating for its massive energy requirements that made him look like a grounded flight model and gaudy leg struts. It had been a clever build, but it certainly wasn't perfect, and they would inevitably need to build quite a few more of them before his natural lifespan ran out.

He handed Ratchet the power drill with a well practiced smile.

"Alright, roll over, let's take a look at those vents," Ratchet prompted.

His patient rolled over, red metal glistening in the overhead lights. The vents were making a clicking noise- one his databanks recognized easily as a broken fan blade.

"Knockout, would you mind taking the casing? I'll replace the blades."

Knockout made a cheery noise of agreement behind him, and Ratchet bent over the vent's connections.

* * *

Jack leaned back against the hard plastic swivel chair, taking a long drink of the watered down cola lazily.

"You missed last month," Raf said, between fistfuls of french fries. Jack shrugged amiably.

"Missions, stuff, you know the drill. We can go twice this month, if you want. It's my turn to pick after this, anyway."

Rafael shrugged, unwrapping his dollar menu cheeseburger, "You know, no matter how many times you ask me, I'm  _always_  going to pick this McDonalds. It's the best one."

Jack waved around him, "Then why are we  _always_  the only ones here?"

Raf smiled with a raised eyebrow and gestured toward him with his burger, "I like it  _because_  we are always the only ones here. Honestly, I can't figure out how this place is still open."

"Corporation stuff, I guess," Jack said, dumping his fries out onto the plastic tray.

"Mm. Ah, did Arcee show you the new suit I'm working on? Knockout helped me paint this one orange. It's looking pretty fierce."

"No, she didn't," he said, mouth full, "Sounds pretty slick, though. Is it battle-ready?"

"No, but I think the next model will be. Reinforced plating. It'll probably be a lot bigger, though. More expensive."

Jack shrugged and gestured dramatically to the dollar menu spread laid out over the cheap plastic table, "Unlike this grand feast, here, I am not the one footing the bill on the giant robot suit project. Hows the radiation guards?"

"Better than the last one, I think I've worked out all the kinks now. A little more testing and I'll send you the specs. Should be good to go for mass production within the year, I think. New comm unit installed, consolidated the ventilation system, worked out that weird problem with the knee joints."

Jack brightened at that, " _Good_. We could really use it."

"Ah!" Raf cried suddenly, clapping his hands, and Jack nearly dropped his cup, "It's Miko's birthday next week. She told me to make sure you don't forget again."

"That was one time..." Jack mumbled through his straw, "And I bought her a whole  _stack_  of those weird indie grunge CDs she likes. I had to go to some dude's  _house_  to buy one. In  _Germany_."

Raf gestured at him accusingly with a fry, "Well, don't forget  _this_  time. She's doing one of those things with her family again this year, and you  _know_  how bad my Japanese is. Don't let me embarrass myself  _again_."

"I won't, I won't," Jack assured him, standing up to empty his tray in the trash, before adding in a mumble, "Not like twenty-three was even an  _important_  birthday."

"Coming up for a visit after this?"

"Mm, no, I've got orders to be somewhere. But," he said, sitting back down as Raf started in on the second cheeseburger, "tell Arcee I said hey. I'll keep my schedule open after Miko's party. "

"She'll be glad to hear it," Raf said, "She got a new paintjob."

"What? Seriously? Frag, Raf, what is it?"

"Secret, promised her I wouldn't say. Now you'll just have to come back and visit if you want to know."

"Raf, no, come on, you're killing me here. It's gonna bug me all week. I won't even have comm access until Wednesday!" Jack pleaded.

Raf shrugged and couldn't hide the mischievous grin on his face, even with his burger, "Suffer, Darby."

Jack groaned.

"We're going to Taco Bell next time, and you're trying that dorito thing," Jack hissed, and Raf whined.

"What? No, that sounds terrible."

Jack laughed, "Suffer, Esquivel."

* * *

"You can just go, you know."

Soundwave turned away from the flickering stars to look at the human standing nearby in his ridiculous gaudy fake Cybertronian suit. It may have been practical, but it looked entirely silly to him. The semi-rebuilt ruins of Tyger Pax rose up around him, glimmering in the double moonlight, an odd contrast.

He shook his head.

"I know you miss Megatron. Just... go find him. And quit moping around here."

Soundwave played an error noise.

"Come off it, you have  _so_  been moping about for the last  _decade._  He's not coming back here," Rafael moved to sit next to him.

Soundwave let his standing orders scroll across his visor.  _All prior Decepticons are hereby ordered to cooperate with the Autobots in the restoration of Cybertron._

Rafael snorted, "You're not here because of orders, Sounders."

He played a  _very_  loud error noise, but the human just shrugged, and gestured toward the audio receptors he had  _apparantly_  disabled. Frag him. Human knew him too well.

"Seriously, though," the human said, leaning back against the wall, an odd habit of his, "I'm not worried about you teaming up with him and reviving the war," he laughed, and Soundwave turned away, surly, "But if you'd be happier out there with him, you should go. Family, and all that."

Soundwave considered it for a moment, watching the stars. Considered Megatron, off in space somewhere, who had once been a great mech with great ideals who had promised to deliver him from the pits and bring him to the sky with him. Who  _had._  And the mad warlord he had watched him become with unfaltering loyalty, even as he burned down the skies the had worked so hard to reach.

The bright planet Cybertron had become in the last solar decacycle, the patches of colonies spread out on its surface, the way prior Decepticons looked at him with awe and fear and confusion when he stood next to Autobots- something he still refused to himself be. They would look at the Decepticon emblem on his arm, the one he wore out of respect for the cause he'd joined, if not the cause it had eventually become, with confusion and alarm, and nearly always cowed and forfeited their fight when he ordered them to lay down their weapons and surrender.

He thought of the raids, and their increasing frequency with the resettlement of Cybertron. Those scraps would end less favourably without his influence, he was certain. He eyed the human beside him cautiously.

It had been a good solar decacycle. Something he couldn't say he'd had otherwise in eons. He lived in a sort of exile in Tyger Pax, in a chamber on the surface, and had intended to remain alone, and wasn't sure how he'd managed to find himself surrounded by surrendered Decepticons that respected him and the old cause. A sort of de facto leader in an ungoverned sort-of city. The human visited more often than Soundwave really though necessary- and though he wouldn't admit it, he'd come to enjoy the company, most days. Very few mechs were comfortable with his silence. Though, recently, the old relief that the human's short lifespan would run out in short time and any embarrassment he might have would be lost with him was no longer comforting, though he tried to ignore it. He'd known countless mechs with far shorter lifespans than this human had- though still somewhat young for his species- managed to survive thus far.

But that was how war went.

He pulled up Megatron's location on his visor, a pulsing beacon several light years away. Of course he'd been tracing him. _Of course_  he had known where he was- he was too important not to keep tabs on.

Rafael did not seem surprised.

"Everything will still be here when you get back. If you come back," he said after a moment, looking up at the swirling galaxies. Rafael did not possess the integrated systems to absorb the data he'd displayed and pinpoint Megatron's location based on that, but he knew enough of the general universe to guess the direction based on what he'd seen. Soundwave shook his head.

"Seriously, it's not a worry- Ramjet has shown really promising leadership, and I think he could take over Tyger Pax in your absence, and-"

"Family."

He said it in his own voice, despite the chills it sent down his chassis to do so. He hadn't willingly used it- within memory- in hundreds of thousands of cycles, but there was an unusual comfort in hearing that voice again. He had not heard it outside of duress since it's original owner had gone offline.

Rafael was looking at him in a sort of wild confusion and alarm. He realized belatedly he'd startled him, and almost found it funny. Soundwave pointed at him with a slender finger, then waved it off in a way he hoped the alien would interpret as casual.

"Family. Not here later," he said, voice awkward with disuse.

It was... actually, oddly good to hear it again. Outside of war, the fear of death something duller, quieter, far more unlikely than it had been since he was a sparkling.

Rafael eyed him with a profoundly intense contemplation, before he turned to look back at the stars.

"...Woulda missed you, anyway."

* * *

"Oy, Knockout. You'll never guess what I found in the last pass at Vos."

"Ooh?" Knockout purred in the way he always did, reattaching the injured- and temporarily stasised- Vehicon's arm. The last raid had been particularly bad, but the Predacons final, begrudging acceptance of an alliance had been helpful.

Raf held up a crate, "A  _whole_  aborted delivery of med kit packs, pre-war. You will not  _believe_  the data in here."

Knockout's faceplate lit up, and he promptly dropped what he was doing to pull the crate from his hands and begin rummaging through its treasures. It had been a lucky find- one he hadn't been expecting or even looking for, but he'd known exactly what to do with it when he'd found it.

He picked up the the welder, and went to tend to the Vehicon's arm while Knockout was distracted. It was a simple fix- one he'd done enough times by now himself, and Knockout didn't even cast him a second glance once he noticed the operation had been taken from him. He was far too distracted, anyway.

Raf finished sautering the left side tertiary wires into the joint, and looked over his metal shoulder back at the actual doctor, who was trying to power on an old datapad.

"Also..." Raf began, and Knockout looked up at him expectantly, "I was going to go out by Praxus tomorrow, check on the settlement that way, you know?" Knockout's faceplate froze, but Rafael continued, "And I wondered if you wanted to go with me."

There was a beat, and Knockout lowered the datapad back into the box with a sigh, "Yes... I would, actually. It has been awhile."

* * *

The memorial for Breakdown wasn't large, or ornate. It was a small thing, in Praxus, where most of the Vehicons had immigrated. It looked so out of place where it was, a simple metal sculpture amongst the gardens of Praxus the locals had been working to reestablish.

They spent a long time by it, under the midday Cybertronian sun.

Rafael had the foresight to bring lunch.

* * *

Bee turned his tires a little too quickly, sending him off the road and losing the corner- he was back on nearly immediately, but it had lost him a few precious seconds, and Raf had nosed up past him, just a few inches ahead.

The red Nevada landscape flew by, forgotten, nearly irrelevant as they closed in on their finishing line- a weathered, ancient tin sign, half submerged in the Earth, that had once read "Jasper, Nevada" but now read nothing. He sped forward, a little dangerously, trying to pull forward and finding himself, for the first time,  _unable to_ , something he had never expected.

They flew past the sign, Rafael with a distinct, undeniable lead. He skidded to a halt a fair few meters down the road, before kicking open the window with a cheer and pointing at him triumphantly. Bee transformed, totally baffled.

It wasn't so long ago he could have beaten him at  _video game_  driving, while simultaneously  _actually_  driving- and now, even trying, he found himself beaten.

"I told you I was a fast learner," Raf said, huffing and puffing- even though driving the car he'd been building for so long had hardly been exhaustive, unlike it had been for him.

Bee just laughed. He couldn't believe he'd actually lost.

* * *

"You know, there used to be a café here," Ratchet said, and Rafael turned towards him, away from the float palette he'd been repairing.

"Here? Specifically?"

"Yes. Optimus and I used to 'do lunch' here. Like you and Jack do."

Rafael set down his tools and stood up, looking at the wreckage.

"Do you think we should rebuild it?"

Ratchet paused for a long moment, before shaking his head, "No."

Rafael waited to see if he'd continue, but he didn't, so he knelt back down to finish repairing the float pallet, so they could continue back to the inner part of the city, where the New Iacon residents were expecting a delivery of medical supplies- held up by an unfortunate encounter with some scraplets they had fended off.

"It has been a long time since I said so," Ratchet said, not looking away from the old ruins of the café, "But I am glad you came back, if I am still saddened by the circumstances that allowed it."

"What circumstances?" Rafael asked absently, picking up the discarded welder to reattach the outer casing.

Ratchet frowned, "Your parents."

"What about them?" Rafael grunted, pressing the flame to the edges.

Ratchet turned around, "They hurt you. You wouldn't talk about it for months."

Rafael laughed, and flicked off the welder. The float pallet rose back off the ground, a sort of hovering cargo carrier of manageable size.

"They were scrap parents, but they never hit me," he said, collecting his equipment and returning it to the float pallet, "I lied."

Ratchet's optics widened, realization spreading across his face, "You..."

Rafael reattached the pallet's tow lead and pulled it forward gently, nodding in the direction of their destination, "My family needed me. I did what I had to."


End file.
